'We try to avoid anxiety by getting rich, by making a hundred thousand dollars when we're twenty-one years of age, by becoming millionaires. Now none of those things lead to the joy, the creativity that I'm talking about. One can own the world and still be without the inner sense of pleasure, of joy, of courage, of creation. I think our society is in the midst of a vast change. The society that began at the Renaissance now is ending, and we are seeing the results of this ending of a social period in the fact that psychotherapy has grown with such great zest. Almost every other person in California is a psychotherapist. And this always happens when an age is dying. You see, the Greeks began their great age in the seventh, sixth centuries B.C., and then they talked of beauty and goodness and truth, all these great things that the philosophers talked about. But by the second century B.C., first century B.C., that had all been forgotten. The philosophers now talked about security, and they tried to help people get along with as little pain as possible, and they made mottoes for human beings. Beauty and truth and goodness had been lost. Our Renaissance began the modern age, and at the beginning of an age there are no psychotherapists. This is taken care of by religion and by art and by beauty, by music. But at the end of an age – every age down through history has been the same – every other person becomes a therapist, because there are no ways of ministering to people in need, and they form long lines to the psychotherapist's office. I think it's a sign of the decadence of the age, rather than a sign of our great intelligence.' -- Release

'With more than a century of professional psychotherapy under our belt, we psychologists have done a terrible job of defining what we do, setting standards for what we do and explaining what we do in a way that non-psychologists can understand. Despite this horribly inefficient marketing, about one in four people have sought out mental health services in the past couple years. How many of them encountered one of the problems listed above? I've always felt a duty to demystify psychotherapy. The more the public understands about this process, the quicker they'll leave bad therapy, fight the stigma, challenge the limitations of managed care and become an active, empowered participant in their own healing process. I believe a little education will save money and time, prevent aggravation and eventually help improve lives.'

'Every once in a while, your barriers break down. You get back to this certain gasp, because there's no way to reverse time.'

'Sometimes I'll just wait and say: "Why don't you just say whatever comes?" People have a great deal of difficulty doing that, but I'll ask: "Let's see what comes up today." Especially patients who I've been seeing for a while and don't know what to say, I will say with a certain kind of confidence: "You know, that's terrific in a way, because sometimes meetings you haven't rehearsed or planned for are much better, so let's just take time now and see what comes." It sounds like a little bit of Freud's notion of free association, but in a much more focused way. I'll generally guide them into wherever we go with this.'

'An expanded version of an article 'The Meaning of Life' published in the Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, Dec 2001, p. 32-33 -- Existential therapy is a serious, deep and far-reaching enquiry into what it means to a particular person to be a human being. It involves an often-painful process of squarely facing up to those things that are ordinarily avoided and evaded. Paradoxically such a process can bring great strength and unexpected joy. Existential work is not for the fainthearted and it may sometimes consist of encouraging rather than soothing anxiety and guilt. The essence of the existential approach is to deflate our human vanities and remember that at the end of all our worldly adventures and preoccupations we are born to die.'

'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.'

'In situations where a person has had significant trauma, which may include sexual or physical abuse, a feeling of safety and security is essential and it may be important to choose a therapist who evokes the most trust and security – and this may be a therapist of the opposite sex of the abuser. On the other hand, selecting a therapist whose gender is likely to stir up some of the same feelings you are in therapy to deal with can be helpful. And finally, though it may be tempting to choose a therapist of the same sex out of a sense that they can best understand what it’s like for you, it may also be important not to choose a therapist who seems to automatically understand you, since this could get in the way of thoroughly exploring and articulating subtleties of experience that may be important to address.'

'Comment: Anonymous on May 26, 2011 - 2:28pm: I am female and have never enjoyed a helpful relationship with a female counselor. I never tried working with a male therapist, but it interests me for one reason. Though it is a generalization, men tend to want to help solve problems and find answers when they hear about a problem. For this reason, sometimes I turn to a male friend when I want a new perspective or idea on things. If I just want to "talk" or "vent", then my female friends tend to be better listeners without offering solutions. As one girlfriend puts it, in her experience men hate to see women cry over something they can help her fix.'

'A male psychotherapist may be more effective for some patients than others; just as a female psychotherapist may have more success with certain patients than others. Part of this difference does have to do with gender and often unconscious gender psychology. Some male psychotherapists, for example, are fearful or out of touch with their "masculine" aggression, while others are estranged from their "feminine" side and feelings. Some female therapists either overidentify with the "masculine,"or devalue and dissociate it in their own personalities. This can all come into play during treatment, and commonly does so unconsciously in the form of what we call "countertransference" and other blindspots and biases on the psychotherapist's part. For example, when women stepped into the void left by men in the field of clinical psychology and other mental health professions, many adopted men's "masculine" perspective and rational orientation to treatment. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a good example of such a highly "masculinized" approach today, one which imputes primacy to rationality and thinking over affect, the unconscious, and the so-called "irrational" (i.e., "feminine") aspects of experience. The choice of this one-sidedly logical, mechanistic orientation to treatment represents an overvaluation of the "masculine" and devaluation of the "feminine" in psychotherapy itself. Paradoxically, given the vast popularity of CBT with today's female and few remaining male psychotherapists as opposed to more analytical, humanistic or existential approaches, it is clear that, unfortunately, the "feminization" of the psychotherapy field in terms of gender does not necessarily translate into a more truly "feminine" orientation to psychotherapy. Or, in some instances, it has led to an overly "feminine," soft, passive approach to treatment in which firm limits, boundaries, structure and confrontation of what I call the daimonic are lacking. -- ...the fact remains that men and women clinicians have very divergent perspectives, psychologies and life experiences, and each bring something different to the therapeutic table. Not better or worse, superior or inferior. Just different, but equally valuable. This is why it is wisely recommended, and in some clinical training programs required, that trainees undergo two courses of therapy or analysis – one with each sex. -- Because of our complementary polar differences, women will always need male psychotherapists, and men female psychotherapists. Despite of, or really, due to our gender differences, we still have much to learn from each other. But men will always need to be mentored and initiated into manhood mainly by men, not women. Now that there is a serious shortage of men remaining in or entering the psychotherapy profession, unlucky consumers have even fewer choices – not only regarding the type of treatment they receive, but which gender will provide it.'

'Males generally define themselves in terms of individual achievement and work and females more often in relational terms (Gilligan, 1987). In psychotherapy, therapists communicate values by their selection of material to question or to comment on, by the timing of their interpretations, and by their affective reaction to the content of what is said by the patient. Male and female therapists can view a patient’s life experiences differently, particularly if these experiences are gender specific (Shapiro, 1993). Many support the view that women should be treated by women in order to avoid being misunderstood or treated from a male-oriented perspective. This male perspective may oversimplify the effects of gender and minimize the necessary working through of ambivalence and conflict in the therapeutic relationship. Stereotypes and expectations about women affect male patients as well. A man may seek treatment from a woman in order to avoid a competitive or an authoritarian relationship with a man, to avoid homosexual feelings, or because he has had poor relationships with women in the past and wants to work these out with a woman. His expectations may be that a woman will provide the cure for his problems with intimacy. Many women feel that it is more difficult for a man to empathize with some issues that are gender specific; this may also be true for women who must empathize with male issues (Horner, 1992). Therapists often do not attend sufficiently to the transference issues that encourage or inhibit discussion of particular material. This insufficient attention may be based on a number of factors, including gender.'

'Therapeutic love cannot be sexualized or romanticized, though such feelings frequently find their way into the consulting room. When they do so, the key, for both patient and therapist, is never to act on them. But, at the same time, not deny them. To acknowledge, honor and reflect upon these passionate feelings, but not to impulsively act them out. Talking openly about such transferential feelings is essential for the patient and to the process. Transference (which can also sometimes turn negative and nasty) is the royal road right into the very core "love wound" complex. But becoming more receptive to love means being willing to gradually and painfully tear open the old love wound. This core love wound typically contains a repressed reservoir of rage, grief, hurt and sadness from the past, all of which must be slowly allowed to surface, flow and be consciously felt. But it also holds immense libidinal energy in the positive sense. This libidinal energy is daimonic, which is to say that it is uncannily powerful, and can be both destructive and creative. If the erotic transference can be handled properly, without dismissing, denigrating or rejecting it, while at the same time firmly maintaining clear and consistent boundaries, this newly liberated libidinal energy or love from the patient can be redirected out into his or her life beyond the therapist's office. For now, the patient has once again experienced love, at least to some degree, albeit in the relative safety and security of the sacred container or temenos of psychotherapy. Once the patient regains or reawakens to this vital, child-like capacity to love, to care, to open oneself to another, or, in a more spiritual sense, to the existential reality, tragedy, suffering and beauty of life and death, he or she is prepared to try doing so in that great big world beyond the secure yet constricted womb of therapy. He or she is ready for love. And for life.'

'At its best, therapeutic love on the psychotherapist's part may be most closely compared to amor platonicus (platonic love), agape, philia or storge, the nurturing love parents feel for their offspring. But eros, which Plato spoke of as a "great daimon," is perennially potentiated in both parties. How to provide such therapeutic love without overstepping the physical or romantic boundaries is part of the art of psychotherapy. How psychotherapists deal with the unexpected and unbidden appearance of eros, in themselves or their patients, in the transference or counter-transference, can make or break the treatment outcome. So what do psychotherapy patients really need? Is love enough? No. But there is little doubt as to the potent healing power of love, both in treatment and in life. American psychologist Carl Rogers, drawing on the discoveries of psychoanalysis, identified in his "person-centered" approach the importance of what he called "unconditional positive regard" and "reflective listening" in the therapy process, both of which are loving ways of relating empathetically to another human being. And Dr. Rogers, naively in my view, believed that if this loving approach could consistently be provided to the patient or "client" as he preferred to call them, it was all that's really needed for successful therapy. Perhaps for some. But, at least in my experience, patients need more from their psychotherapist than love in this sense. They also need structure, limits, firmness, guidance, encouragement, confrontation, honesty, integrity and resolute commitment on the psychotherapist's part to accompany them on their personal journey through hell (and the unconscious) and back. ...it is only love – the right love at the right time – that can cure or heal [a] festering "love wound." No amount of technical tricks, to paraphrase the mature Jung, cognitive restructuring or pharmacotherapy will do. Love in psychotherapy, as in any healthy, mature relationship, is a two-way street: Love flows from the psychotherapist and back from the patient. So it is not just the love provided by the therapist that matters, but the love returned by the patient that is ultimately the healing factor in treatment.'

'Psychotherapy, in my view, is more soundly focused on what C.G. Jung termed individuation: the unpredictable, lengthy, labyrinthine process of becoming more whole. Psychotherapy is about finding and fulfilling our destiny: While for most this may include romantic love, marriage, parenthood, career, etc., there are others for whom fate or destiny has something quite different in store. Psychotherapy is about creativity: courageously claiming the personal freedom to express ourselves constructively in the world to our fullest potential. Finally, psychotherapy is fundamentally about acceptance: learning to accept ourselves and others, our fate, our responsibility, our existential aloneness, the unconscious, evil, the daimonic, and life on its own terms. Surely, this is a sort of love. Love of reality. Love of the world as it is. Love of all humanity. Love even of the dark and tragic, seemingly sometimes senseless side of life. And this is, for want of a better term, a spiritual love. Psychotherapy is, for these reasons, an essentially spiritual process. But it is precisely this reawakening, rekindling or stirring of spiritual love, this gradual opening up, this growing willingness to tolerate ambiguity and loneliness, this deepening receptivity to life, oneself and others during the psychotherapy process that can ready us for interpersonal love and intimacy, and which – when lacking, undeveloped or resisted - resides at the root of most mental disorders. And what exactly is the mysterious, potent, transformative power that serves to awaken this newfound or renewed capacity to love in the psychotherapy patient? Freud, Jung and others since observed that the alchemical catalyst occurs in the dynamic and uniquely intimate relationship between patient and therapist, and very much resembles--yes, you guessed it – love.'

'What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. The unconscious is that which is unknown to us. For this reason, we humans are born not only with an instinctive fear of the unknown and of death, but also an archetypal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the psychotherapy process so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Fundamentally, the Minotaur represents the primal fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is deeply-seated in the human psyche. Indeed, the Minotaur may be seen as a metaphor for death and death anxiety. Existentially, death is a symbol of non-being or non-existence, and, therefore, death anxiety can be understood, in Kierkegaard's words, as the "fear of nothingness." As existential psychologist Rollo May (1977) points out, "the threat of non-being lies in the psychological and spiritual realm as well – namely, in the threat of meaninglessness in one's existence." The Minotaur also embodies both fate (our biological nature) and destiny (our freedom) and the integral interrelationship between the two. But why do we find it such a dreadful image? Because to confront the Minotaur in the dark labyrinth is to confront ourselves: our fears of the unknown, our ferocious, beastly nature, our rage, aggression, sexuality, mortality, the daimonic. This self-confrontation is successfully accomplished by proceeding carefully yet courageously along one's own Ariadnean thread. The secret is that, metaphorically, we each have been given this thread to follow and lead us to our destiny – but only if we are brave enough to do so. Psychotherapy sometimes entails helping the patient who has lost touch with this precious thread to find it, take hold of it, and follow it wherever it may lead, inching along blindly on hands and knees in the darkness through the unknown. ...once grasped, proceeding slowly but steadily along one's Ariadnean thread provides a profound sense of purpose and meaning in life. As though one is being pulled or guided by some power greater than oneself.'

'What is the psychospiritual significance of the mythical labyrinth? The labyrinth can be seen as an archetypal symbol of the psyche and of what C.G. Jung called the individuation process: that twisty, unpredictable, tortuous, serpentine path toward wholeness and authenticity. The goal is to reach the center, the Self, the core of our being. But this is only half the journey. For having discovered the inner center with it's treasure, the "pearl of great price," is not sufficient: One must then find a way out of the labyrinth and back to the outer world – forever transformed by this experience. And this inward and outward expedition is repeated over and over, each time yielding new riches. Psychotherapy itself can be such a labyrinthine process. Patients often seek psychotherapy because they feel alone and hopeless, confused and abandoned, much like the unlucky lost souls caught in the mythic labyrinth. Indeed, as for those suffering victims, suicide sometimes seems the only way out of the labyrinth. The impenetrable darkness, disorientation, discouragement and deep dread of the unknown may be intolerable at times. What is it about the inescapable labyrinth that makes it so tragically intolerable? Perhaps it is precisely the immense nothingness and darkness of the labyrinth that we humans find most frightening: Such places echo or reflect back to us that which dwells in the deepest, darkest recesses of our own psyche. Whatever it is we fear most – and therefore flee from – is called forth and amplified by the lightless labyrinth. The psychotherapy patient too is heroic, sacrificing his or her narcissistic arrogance by seeking help, facing fear of the unknown, willingly walking into the labyrinth and confronting his or her own personal Minotaur. When the psychotherapist invites and encourages the patient to explore the labyrinth – the unknown, the unconscious, the shadow, the daimonic – we bestow the gifts of Ariadne: the empowering sword of strength, courage, and rational, logical, analytical insight, and the means to remain tangibly tethered, rooted, related and connected to us, to reality, to the light, to humanity, to the outer, material world – and to one's self. These are essential tools for the task. Venturing into the labyrinth improperly equipped and prepared is a perilous and foolhardy undertaking for both therapist and patient, courting catastrophe. In psychotherapy, the Ariadnean thread symbolizes both the therapeutic relationship – the strong, supportive, vital, empathetic tie between patient and therapist – as well as the struggling and disoriented hero-patient's still undiscovered destiny.'

'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.'

'When is therapy over? Who decides? And on what basis? What happens when psychotherapy goes on either too briefly or too long? In most cases, today's psychotherapy tends to be too brief, too superficial, and does far too little to psychologically prepare the patient for life after therapy. When the patient requires a more "open-ended" therapy, the question becomes one of duration: How long is long? Therapy addiction is not necessarily the patient or client's fault, but rather the responsibility of the psychotherapist. Psychotherapy, like everything else in life, has limitations. Paradoxically, recognizing and accepting this existential fact of limitation can intensify and deepen the patient's growth and development in therapy. For it is during the "termination phase" of therapy that some of the most important working through is accomplished. This termination phase is the final stage of psychotherapy. But many patients – and therapists – avoid it for as long as possible and thus are never forced to confront it. Termination is a sort of death or loss of a deeply valued, supportive, nurturing and intimate human relationship. But so long as patients remain in this somewhat womb-like, often parent-to-child protective bubble, they, at least at some level, are refusing to grow up and venture out alone into the difficult, cold, cruel world. And by permitting the patient to avoid the anxiety, trepidation and sadness of termination, therapists perpetuate a dependency on therapy every bit as addictive as any drug. The question sooner or later arises: Have I attained my goals for therapy? Can I continue to feel good and remain confident without therapy? What if I stop and begin to backslide? Am I strong enough to handle whatever challenges life brings? These are some of the most crucial questions posed in psychotherapy. And the answers can only be found by accepting and anticipating the inevitability of termination and working through whatever anxieties, abandonment issues, sadness and other feelings this evokes during what is sometimes a prolonged, painful, tumultuous but ultimately liberating and empowering termination process.'

'The public is disenchanted with psychotherapy. This negative attitude has been exacerbated by the predominance of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is spuriously touted by its frequently fiscally motivated supporters as superior to other kinds of psychotherapy in both efficacy and brevity. Psychotherapists in training – psychiatric residents, clinical psychology, counseling and social work interns too are taught the same misleading party line. The sad result has been a gradual mechanization, dehumanization and reductionistic de-souling of psychotherapy. An estimated ninety percent of psychiatrists no longer practice psychotherapy much at all, relying heavily instead on pharmacotherapy. Ironically, the aforementioned mounting crisis within the psychotherapy world parallels a growing crisis in public mental health. The truth is, most psychotherapy patients need far more than what pharmaceutical intervention and/or cognitive restructuring – the two most popular "evidence-based" modalities today – can provide. As does every person seeking meaning and peace of mind. They need and deserve support and accompaniment through their painful, frightening, perilous spiritual or existential crises, their "dark night of the soul." They need a psychologically meaningful method to confront their metaphorical devils and demons, their repressed anger or rage, and the existential reality of evil. The fundamental task of a secular spiritual psychotherapy is to redeem (rather than cast out or exorcise) our emotional devils. It is inevitably both a psychological and spiritual venture. Bravely voicing our inner "demons" – symbolizing those unconscious tendencies we most fear, flee from, and hence, are obsessed or haunted by – transmutes them into helpful spiritual allies. During this alchemical process, the esoteric secret that many artists and spiritual savants share is revealed: That same demon so righteously run from and rejected paradoxically becomes the redemptive source of vitality, creativity, and authentic spirituality.'

'Exorcism can be said to be the prototype of modern psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, like exorcism, commonly consists of a prolonged, pitched, demanding, soul-wrenching, sometimes tedious bitter battle royale with the patient's diabolically obdurate emotional "demons," at times waged over the course of years or even decades rather than weeks or months, and not necessarily always with consummate success. And there is now growing recognition--not only by psychoanalytic practitioners--of the very real risks and dangers of psychic infection inherent also in the practice of psychotherapy. (This psychic susceptibility is almost universally depicted in these films, starting with The Exorcist and most recently by The Devil Inside.) Counter-transference is what we clinicians technically call this treacherous psychological phenomenon, which can cause the psychotherapist (or exorcist) to suffer disturbing, subjective symptoms during the treatment process – sometimes even as the patient progresses! Hence the ever-present importance for psychotherapists, like exorcists, to perform their sacred work within a formally ritualized structure, making full use of collegial support, cooperation and consultation, and to maintain inviolable personal boundaries. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, no one wrestles with the emotional demons of others all day without themselves being affected. This is an unavoidable occupational hazard of both exorcism and psychotherapy.'

'Journey Into Self is a documentary concerning a group-therapy session of eight well-adjusted people who have never met before. Doctors Richard Farson and Carl Rogers lead the group discussion which include a cashier, a theology student, a teacher, a principal, three businessmen and a housewife. The 16-hour session is edited to a revealing 47 minutes in which the participants reveal their innermost feelings, wants and needs in this engaging psychological study.' -- Part 2: http://youtu.be/uZXrM5GMEyg

'Early relationships alter our brains before we learn to speak. As you learn together with your earliest caregivers how to regulate your emotions, your brain will be making lots of new pathways that are necessary for you to learn to become comfortable with your emotions and manage them for yourself. Your earliest bonds also serve as a model for all subsequent relationships, teaching you to form nourishing, enriching, and mutually beneficial relationships throughout your life. The bulk of these neural connections happen before you are two years old. In other words, much of the wiring up that determines how you respond emotionally and conduct relationships, happened pre-verbally. The logic, reason and language part of your brain develops so slowly that most of the patterns for how you feel are formed before you can reason with yourself and others.'

"Presumably, the more you pay, the more effective it is." "That has been established for a long time in psychotherapy."

'This is a tape of a Counseling Session between Carl Rogers and Gloria. Carl Rogers uses Person Centred approach. Humanistic style of counseling.'

'...our capacity for self-regulation depends so much upon our interactions with other people that it might well be called "other-regulated self-regulation." We're not born knowing how to regulate ourselves – in fact, we're alarmingly, chaotically, un-self-regulated creatures at birth, more so than most other newborn animals on earth. Loving parents, if we're lucky, begin the long process of teaching us how to organize and regulate our inner selves - encoding their care and attention in the pliable neural fibers that integrate various regions throughout our brains. No matter how good we had it in the beginning, however, we'll need reinforcement of these early lessons throughout life, and much remedial work if we were shortchanged early on. For Siegel, therapists are the remedial attachment experts and rescuers of the chronically un-self-regulated, and it is their job to, in effect, help rewire the frayed neural connections, reintegrate (or sometimes integrate for the first time) different areas and functions of the brain – implicit and explicit memory, right and left hemisphere, neocortex with limbic system and brain stem.'

'After decades of cognitive and behavioral scientists purposely seeking "to put emotions out of sight and out of mind," says neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, they're being forced to "relearn that ancient emotional systems have a power that is quite independent of neocortical processes." What really has changed isn't so much the aim of therapy, which has always been, whatever its putative goal, changing, shaping, soothing, controlling, redirecting, harnessing the emotions, even freeing some of them up for more robust expression—that's what "affect regulation" is all about. What's changing is the game of therapy—how it's done. For the first time, mainstream therapists are trying, as it were, to fight fire with fire—to get at that vast, subterranean sea of affect as much or more through nonverbal resonance as through words. Through facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice, tempo, breathing, the therapist creates a kind of wordless but dense and charged felt presence, which permeates the being of both therapist and client.'

'Psychological resistance is the phenomenon often encountered in clinical practice in which patients either directly or indirectly oppose changing their behavior or refuse to discuss, remember, or think about presumably clinically relevant experiences. ...[psychiatric] symptoms represent an unconscious tradeoff in exchange for the sufferer being spared other, experientially worse, psychological displeasures, by way of what Freud labeled a "compromise formation": "settling the conflict by constructing a symptom is the most convenient way out and the one most agreeable to the pleasure principle". The compromise ... is to achieve maximum drive satisfaction with minimum resultant pain (negative reactions from within and without). Freud theorized that psychopathology was due to unsuccessful compromises – "We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality" ...'

On Becoming a Person: Dealing with Breakdowns in Communication: Real communication occurs, and [the] evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding. What does that mean? It would simply mean that before presenting your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to achieve the other speaker's frame of reference – to understand his thoughts and feelings so well that you could summarize them for him. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But if you try it you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. ...courage is required. If you really understand another person in this way, if you are willing to enter his private world and see the way life appears to him, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it his way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or your personality. This risk of being changed is one of the most frightening prospects most of us can face.

'From McKee: "Story begins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist's life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To do so, that character will conceive of an "Object of Desire," that which they [believe] they need to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the various dimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire ... and they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physical environment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally be able to restore their life to a satisfying balance." -- Everything that happens in your life is digested by you through this process, so it would be worth your time to memorize it.'

'The attempt to escape from feelings has its origins in a babyhood in which the baby's feelings have not been identified and responded to in a contingent way. You can only change emotional processing by doing it differently. When a particular feeling is aroused, neurotransmitters are released from the subcortex and old neural networks automatically become activated to manage this state of arousal in the old way. If your therapist accepts your feelings, they do not have to be denied by the neural network which would normally do that, or acted upon by the neural network that would normally respond in that way. The therapist's acceptance allows a mental space to reflect on the feelings and consider how to respond afresh. Whilst the feelings are alive and active, so too are the stress hormones which will assist new (higher brain) cortisol synapses to be made in response to the sub-cortical signals. Together with the therapist, new networks can be developed.'

'They didn't rush because the kid can't handle pain, but because they can't tolerate the kid's pain.' -- 'I know this is going to run me afoul of every comfy-chair therapist in America, but there is no reason to write anything down, ever. You're not a detective, you're not looking for inconsistencies or lost time, the patient is there for answers and the structure of your relationship is itself the answers. We can discuss good and bad technique later; the point here is to establish that these two people are creating "environments" that are safe for themselves. It may also be safe for the patient, it may be labeled as "for the patient" but I hope it is evident that the real impetus is the comfort of the therapist. With me so far? Ok: that's also how they parent.'

'Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.'

'Gestalt therapy is built upon two central ideas: that the most helpful focus of psychotherapy is the experiential present moment, and that everyone is caught in webs of relationships; thus, it is only possible to know ourselves against the background of our relationship to the other.'

'Tom Cronin: He's making his first mistake. - Nicky: It's not a mistake. They don't make mistakes. They don't do random. There's always an objective. Always a target. - Pamela Landy: The objectives and targets always came from us. Who's giving them to him now? - Nicky: Scary version? He is.'

'...ask the candidate for your therapist about her childhood and her experiences during her training. Where did she get her training, what was helpful to her, what was not? ...does she protect people who damaged her? Does she minimize the damage? Was she beaten as a child? How does she value this experience? Is she really aware of its consequences for her later life, or is she denying its importance? Does she avoid the confrontation with her own pain? In the last case she will do everything to silence you, not always visibly. -- ...you may even find [that a therapist wants to make you feel like a] helpless child... Then you may end up in a dependence on them and on your feelings of a helpless, unchangeable rage against your parents without being able to free yourself for what YOU really need. A good therapist must help you to find and fulfill YOUR OWN needs, neglected for such a long time, needs for free expression, for being understood, respected and taken seriously.'

'The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear. Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of its rights and its speech, deceived in its love and its trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in its pain, such a child is blind, lost, and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults. It is without orientation and completely defenseless. Its whole being would like to shout out its anger, give voice to its feeling of outrage, call for help. But that is exactly what it may not do. All its normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed it to help it survive, remain blocked. Thus, the healthy impulse to protest against inhumanity has to be suppressed. Some therapists fear this truth. By refusing to forgive, I give up my illusions. A mistreated child cannot live without them. But a grown-up therapist must be able to manage it. His or her patients should be able to ask: "Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to?"'

'Enlightened Witnesses are therapists with the courage to face up to their own histories and to gain their autonomy in doing so... The adult needs assistance in coping with the present situations as an adult, while at the same time maintaining contact with the suffering and knowing child he once was, the child he could not muster the courage to listen to for so long but now, with help, can finally pay heed to. The body knows everything that has happened to it but it has no language to express that knowledge. It is like the child we once were, the child that sees all but without the aid of the adults remains helpless and alone. Accordingly, whenever the emotions from the past rise to the surface they are invariably accompanied by the fears of the helpless child, dependent on the understanding or at least the reassurances of the caregivers. In a society with a receptive attitude to the distress of children no one will be alone with his/her history.'

'Successful therapy should liberate us from our ingrained adaptation strategies and help us learn to trust our own feelings - something our parents have made difficult, if not impossible. Because it was prohibited, and hence feared. ...children with serious impairments to their identity do not know what they feel and what they really need. They have to find this out in therapy, repeatedly applying what they have learned to new experiences and thus achieving the security that tells them they are not mistaken. If the therapist is a genuine Enlightened Witness, as opposed to AN educator, then the client will have learned to admit his/her emotions, to understand their intensity, and to transform them into conscious feelings leaving new traces of memory... if I am no longer a mystery to myself, then I can act and reflect consciously, I can give my feelings the room they need to develop. This is because I understand them. And once I understand them, they will no longer cause so much fear...'

'... the consequences of early, invisible injuries are so severe precisely because they derive from the trivialization of childhood suffering and the denial of its importance. Adults can easily imagine that they would be horrified and humiliated if they were suddenly attacked by a raging giant many times bigger than themselves. Yet assume that small children will not react in the same way... Parents believe that slaps and spanking do not hurt. Such treatment is designed to impress certain values on their children. And the children end up believing that themselves. Some even learn to laugh the whole thing off and to deride the pain they felt at the humiliations inflicted on them. As adults they adhere to this derision, they are proud of their own cynicism... they comply with the demands of a society that attaches supreme importance to considerate treatment for parents. ...these people obstinately trivialize their own sufferings, even if they are therapists themselves.'

'...when we stop playing down our sufferings and embark on a respectful engagement with them and with the child. The doors barring us off from our own selves suddenly swing open. ...therapy is only successful if it can change this perspective... People who genuinely succeed in feeling how they suffered from their parents' behavior as a child will usually lose their empathy for their parents and gain love for themselves. They will train their affections on the children they once were. But for this change of perspective to succeed, we need a witness who sides fully with the child and does not hesitate to condemn the deeds of its parents. The FAQ list (see "Articles" on this Web page) can help to establish whether the therapist is in a position to do that. I believe that therapists who identify with the parents can be dangerous. But genuine Enlightened Witnesses can help us to abandon denial and face up to our own past, so that we can finally leave it behind without feelings of guilt.'

'We cannot resolve the effects of mistreatment in therapies that evade the facts... But we can liberate ourselves from the consequences if we are prepared to face emotionally the truth of our childhood, to give up the denial of our suffering, to develop empathy for the child that we were and to thus understand the reasons for our fears. In this way, we free ourselves from the fears and guilt feelings that were burdened upon us from the earliest age. Through the knowledge of our history and our feelings, we get to know the persons that we are, and we learn to give to them what they vitally need but never received from their parents: love and respect. This is the goal of the uncovering therapy: The wounds can be scared over if they are tended to and taken seriously; but the existence of the scars should not be denied. -- If later in the lives of these adults dangers should occur, they will be better equipped to confront them because they can better understand their old fears.'

'The regularity with which true feelings were denied or split off made me realize that almost all of us tend to deny, or at least play down, the pain caused by the injuries we suffered in childhood. We do this because we still fear punishment at the hands of our parents, who could not bear to accept us as we truly were. These childhood fears live on in the adult. If they remain unconscious, that is if they are not identified as such, then they will retain their virulence to the end of our lives. Unfortunately, these fears also live on in those who advance theories that camouflage childhood reality and that concentrate instead on the nature of “psychical structures.” This approach began with Freud and was later taken over by C.G. Jung and others. Like present-day “spiritualist” interpretations, these theories all served one purpose: to allay the fears of the maltreated children these therapists still were.'

'The Oracle: We can never see past the choices we don't understand.'

"You really can't see any deeper into other people than you've seen into yourself." -- Stefan Molyneux

'Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems in response to clients descriptions of experiencing various parts—many extreme—within themselves. He noticed that when these parts felt safe and had their concerns addressed, they were less disruptive and would accede to the wise leadership of what Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. In developing IFS, he recognized that, as in systemic family theory, parts take on characteristic roles that help define the inner world of the client. The coordinating Self, which embodies qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion, acts as a center around which the various parts constellate. Because IFS locates the source of healing within the client, the therapist is freed to focus on guiding the clients access to his or her true Self and supporting the client in harnessing its wisdom. This approach makes IFS a non-pathologizing, hopeful framework within which to practice psychotherapy.'

'...we are all "multiple personalities", organized by a "self" that is compassionate, curious, and expansive. These sub-personalities, or "parts", are all good and are with us from birth. They are kept in balance and harmony through self-leadership. When the self is threatened by trauma or devaluation from the outside world, the parts protect the self from harm; in doing so, they also lose trust in the self's ability to provide leadership and safety. In "exiling" the self for its own protection, these parts become extreme and polarized; the parts that were hurt carry the burdens of pain and suffering ("exiles") that other parts (i.e., "managers" and "firefighters") try to keep out of conscious awareness through various roles and operations. This becomes a recursive system which feeds upon itself to create symptoms when a person is under stress. ...the parts that have taken these extreme roles, when released from these roles, become non-extreme, valuable, and helpful to the person.'

'IFS sees consciousness as made up of various "parts" or subpersonalities, each with its own perspective, interests, memories, and viewpoint. A key understanding of IFS is that every part has a positive intent for the person and is trying to help the person or protect against pain, even if the actions/effects of that part cause dysfunction. This means that there is never any reason to fight with, coerce, or try to get rid of a part; it allows the IFS method to promote internal connection and harmony. Parts can have either “extreme roles” or healthy roles. IFS focuses on parts in extreme roles because they are in need of transformation through therapy. IFS sees the therapist's job as helping the client to disentangle themselves from their parts and access the Self, which can then connect with each part and heal it, so that the parts can let go of their destructive roles and enter into a harmonious collaboration, led by the Self.'

'Negative emotional experience just happens to be the only place we’ll find new information trying to access our life, offering us the chance to see some part of ourselves differently, thus capable of changing us. Positive feeling experience is wonderful. It’s no surprise or sin that we want to spend as much time inside it as possible. Nothing else makes more sense. But that doesn’t mean to kill the baby with the bathwater. We all want to ease distress and unhappiness as efficiently as possible. But positive emotional energy doesn’t offer anything new; that’s what’s so good about it – no hassles. Learning always disturbs. That’s what makes it such a good carrier of new information. The question is whether, in being happy, we avoid taking even a moment to pluck just one valuable piece of new information out of our unhappiness before abandoning it? That’s all it takes to learn, to build upon that one piece.'

'The huge advantage of addressing human problems in the individual form is beyond comprehension. The most obvious boon of this altered way of coping with human suffering is the elimination of violence. It’s true even today that the extent to which people address their emotional experience internally, instead of inflicting it together, socially upon some issue or cause, measures the extent to which violence has already been partly defeated. Eventually we will realize that studying the self as an ecosystem, which contains both beneficial as well as contradictory parts, is the most important kind of education we will ever undertake or accomplish. This self-learning will no longer have the sting that “illness” attaches to it; thus it will no longer be called “psychotherapy”. Instead it will become the core of all education, funding every other kind of exploration with the wisdom of self-knowledge.'

'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.'

'...information of a traumatic nature has been forced to bury itself where even the symptomatic person can never find it – that is without skilled assistance. Why? Because this information is very dangerous to know, particularly in the mind of a small child who is still alive within an adult person – who believes anything, most particularly an idea – can magically kill people, and even destroy whole worlds. The fact that this person has grown into adulthood doesn’t change the secret, buried inaccessible-to-awareness aspects of that still hidden information – i.e. that mother is a dangerous person who might poke my eyes out if I don’t stop seeing her meanness, and learn to pretend that it’s not real, that she’s just wonderful. Such buried key information that defies what good sense would perceive, holds conflict within a psyche. That’s what creates symptoms… that parts of the psyche are operating against other parts, keeping secret what the mind needs to know in order to heal.'