Month: August 2022

August 28, 2022

Why a Therapist Must Know Himself

“Knowing yourself is valuable so that the self can be removed from the process.“

So said Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionist painter. The artist referred to his desire to reach people with his work by conveying something “outside of myself.”

He could have talked about a psychotherapist’s proper role instead. The latter removes his ego to better meet the needs of his patient.

His training encourages this.

Why?

Everyone is limited by their understanding of the world. Think of all the things that influence us and help to create such knowledge and restrictions as we possess:

  • a god-given intellectual capacity
  • the historical epoch we have passed through
  • the parenting we received
  • the place or places we lived
  • religious belief or its absence
  • the physical appearance we inherited
  • gender
  • race
  • socio-economic status
  • our inborn human nature

I could go on.

Counselors come to the treatment project with inevitable prejudices, strengths, weaknesses, fluency with language, humor, and areas of insight and experience. We must therefore try to set aside our godly conviction or doubt, political orientation, personal version of morality, and other prejudgments.

The alternative is to leave most of humanity to someone else’s attention.

The latter choice, however, demands awareness that rejecting those who seek our help might add to the injury for which they seek assistance. At the extreme, this raises the question of whether we are fit to engage in our chosen vocation.

Freud tried to solve the problem of interfering with the analysis. He sat unseen by the individual resting on his couch so as not to inhibit or influence the unfolding self-expression. The psychiatrist also was careful about offering too much interpretation — delivering less than many who were to follow in his footsteps.

Our efforts, Freudian or not, must strive to remove our egos as much as possible — the work of a lifetime since life experiences change us, and we adapt as we age.

Some of those who enter the psychotherapy field are self-reflective by nature. Nonetheless, an advanced degree depends on ego strength in the competition always present in college and graduate school. The future clinician must overcome too much vulnerability and susceptibility to intimidation.

A professional cannot easily claim himself as an expert without the self-confidence and expertise his craft demands.

Is it wise or even possible to “unmake” the qualities needed to achieve a position permitting him to do his work?

Fortunately, he should have learned to take steps in this direction.

The psychologist must question himself, not to undermine personal strengths, but to step back and recognize who he is now. The counselor also needs to be eager to learn. Both of these combine in his approach to career and life.

Nor is either a one-time effort.

The questioning ought not to end.

As Plato tells us, Socrates believed “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Let’s suppose the therapist is strong and wise enough. If so, he will be enlightened by his self-examination, recognizing it improves his capacity to treat and enhance his humanity. He will become accepting of criticism and appreciate its potential to help him grow.

This self-confident learner also realizes who is worth listening to and whose opinions are not. This soul understands a lifetime of self-questioning will contribute to his ability to know which questions are essential for him to ask his patients.

In contrast, hubris, arrogance, and self-importance make the doctor’s enlightenment impossible. A person with these characteristics already believes he possesses adequate self-knowledge. In effect, he has blocked the path to looking into his soul.

A gifted counselor comes to acknowledge the function of silence in doing his work. Within a soundless moment exists the recognition he cannot heal everyone and that, on occasion, a different practitioner might better serve someone seeking his help.

In response to a patient’s spontaneous offering of memories, thoughts, and feelings, the self-aware clinician knows when to allow his client to lead. The patient assumes a self-healing obligation, unafraid the therapist will be threatened by losing his position on a pedestal.

The practitioner also understands presence and bearing are, by themselves, sometimes enough. He is then required only as a listener, supporter, and non-religious type of confessor.

The doctor thereby becomes one who hears and accepts the untold secrets, aware they will quiet themselves when a compassionate authority figure does not flee their revelation.

These helping professionals develop a quality of giving something of value to those around them by their state of being — the way they exist in the world.

Striking a pose isn’t required. Rather, one’s natural composure and unaffected engagement with clients will advance the healing potential.

The person comfortable in this role thus grows in the process of practicing his vocation.

Ultimately, the best clinicians present a model for living. They also free the patient to enlarge whatever is most admirable within himself.

Models such as this are always in short supply.

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The top photo is A Session with a Psychotherapist by Mike Relund. Below it is an Untitled, 1969 work of Mark Rothko, and then A Question Mark. Georgio de Chirico’sThe Two Masks of 1926 follows. Finally comes Please Touch Gently by Marcus Quigmire. Wikimedia Commons is the source of the first of these. The Art Institute of Chicago claims the Rothko, while Wikiart.org accounts for The Two Masks.

August 14, 2022

A Therapist’s Tender Message in a Bottle

Adult children and their retired parents sometimes meet in the stories they want to hear and the ones they want to tell.

Thus, we meet in oral, video, and written histories — the questions asked and the ones answered.

My youngest created video histories of my wife and me several years ago. Last year, she gave us individual subscriptions to Storyworth. We were expected to answer in writing one question she selected for us per week, 52 weeks in all. A hardcover book would then emerge.

In approaching this task, I tried to imagine the emotional state of those who might not read it until I was gone. I’d be speaking to my children, grandchildren, and brothers then. Time uncertain, but not just ahead, so I’d like to think.

A morbid thought, you say? Well, I’ve thought of death since my 47-year-old dad had two heart attacks within 24 hours when I was 11. Just so you know, he lived past 88, but the idea of his vulnerability never disappeared.

If you want to take the reader’s role right now, I invite you for a sneak peek.

How has Your Life Turned Out Differently than You Imagined It Would?

Gerald Stein on January 24, 2022.

The question takes me back to childhood since my sense of a future was informed by how my family lived, what my relatives told me about their lives, and my own experience in and out of the home.

I was born in the mid-1940s, roughly five years after the Great Depression ended. Over a decade long, the latter period finally concluded due to government and private spending on WWII, bringing tons of jobs, both for soldiers and the manufacture of the necessary military materials.

For my parents and their siblings, as well as for the friends I made in school, the shadow of hard times didn’t disappear. Moreover, whatever relative financial improvement these adults achieved, there was a sense of insecurity about their position in life.

Since my public high school was attended almost entirely by Jewish students, there was a feeling of unease never discussed — unarticulated but present. Anti-Semitism still existed and, along with the revelation of the six million murdered European Jews, the awareness that genocide might occur again. Were economic downturns to return? No one knew, but some of these ideas still floated around in my home.

My folks told me many things about their lives when I was a boy, including portions of their pre-war personal histories. Through these stories and my own lived experience, I became aware of my mother’s teenage poverty and inadequate nutrition due to the Depression, her resulting tuberculosis, its reappearance in the mid-1950s, dad’s late1958 heart attacks, and his subsequent six-week hospitalization during which children were not permitted to visit. These made health issues real and potentially catastrophic.

Financial concerns were always present, frequently evident in the “Can we afford that?” conversations I overheard. Economy and saving money were the watchwords, avoiding unnecessary expenditures a daily consideration.

Though I was praised for my performance in school and expected by my parents to go to college and become an MD, I was also told I would have to pay for any post-high school education. That meant I had to work after school and in the summer. None of my friends worked every day after school as I did, and my summer times were, even by the time I was 15 or 16, less free of those responsibilities than theirs.

None of my parents’ siblings went to college, at least not for long. There were no models of a way forward. Their jobs were unremarkable, and their vision of a different possible future for their children was abstract. They pointed to unnamed universities but didn’t know what steps I might take to prepare myself and gain admission.

Mom and dad thought I’d win scholarships, and I did win some money as an Illinois State Scholar and in graduate school as a teaching assistant, research assistant, and a fellowship on the way to my doctorate. Still, I knew nothing about how to pursue any of this until I entered college.

Some of my friends had a bit more guidance. Steve Henikoff had two older sisters and parents who’d graduated from the University of Chicago. Rich Adelstein’s soon-to-be brother-in-law went to MIT, as Rich would soon do. Don Byrd’s parents went to U of C, as well.

I don’t blame my parents for not knowing more about how one might get from here to there in educational terms. Dad was preoccupied with making a living, while mom was overwhelmed by three active boys and a troublesome family of origin.

Concerning Steve’s home, books signaled the difference in worlds. Steve’s parents bought him a new set of the World Book Encyclopedia, updated by World Book every year. My folks had a well-worn set of encyclopedias dating to the late 1930s, over 20 years before and therefore out of date. Such comparisons, though never mentioned, told me all I needed to know about my family’s social and financial status and myself.

Steve’s dad, moreover, was at home frequently during the week, talking about buying and selling stock. It was a different world from the one I lived in, though my dad did buy shares in a couple of companies on the stock market. I can still remember the names: American Hospital Supply and Brunswick of bowling equipment fame. The former did well; the latter tanked, and dad lost money and never retook financial risks.

He talked about the ups and downs of these common stocks, preoccupied with their performance during the period he held them. That’s why I still know their names.

As a consequence of all I’ve said, plus, I’m sure, my shyness and insecurity, I also thought of a future in abstract terms. I read about becoming a doctor and pursued the steps described and a curriculum that would get me there. I also knew many attempted to walk the path to that promised land and only a small number made it all the way.

What could I hope for? I enjoyed psychology and history in college more than biology, chemistry, physics, etc. At some point, maybe third-year college, I told my folks I would become a psychologist but still knew little of what would be involved. By the way, most of my friends went away to college, though a few of us remained in Chicago. I couldn’t afford to go away and probably would have been hesitant even with a scholarship paying my room and board.

I recall a teaching assistant at U of I’s Chicago Campus with whom I became somewhat friendly. He was a psychology graduate student there, and he offered some guidance. I also talked to at least one professor about going about the process.

Still, I was hesitant. The grad student told me most of the good jobs in psychology required a Ph.D. Again, it looked like mountain climbing to me, a mountain I doubted I could surmount.

I still thought a Master’s Degree might be as much as I wanted. Fortunately, I was admitted to Northwestern University. As I became comfortable there, I took the next steps and had the support of the faculty, the institution, and many good friends. We were of mutual support to each other.

You know much of the rest. Over my life, I came to have a lovely, dear, and supportive wife, two terrific daughters of whom I am enormously proud, a magnificent son-in-law, and two budding grandsons. I became an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton, and ultimately had a private psychotherapy practice in Clinical Psychology.

I consulted for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Blackhawks. I became an oral historian for the Chicago Symphony and published articles about classical music and sports. I won many friends and was good at keeping them, including several from my days in elementary school.

I served as an expert witness in two or three dozen civil lawsuits, including the most significant class-action case in US history up to that time. I was appointed by the district court to be one of the outside evaluators of the State of Illinois Department of Mental Health (DMH) in a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations brought by two DMH patients and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

I became an excellent public speaker and one of the founders of a high school scholarship at our old high school, philanthropy intended to benefit a diverse and economically disadvantaged student body. I did things I could not have imagined from my childhood home at 5724 N. Talman Avenue in Chicago.

As I write this, I realize that my son-in-law traveled a similar road that was arguably even harder. I had an easier life than my folks, aunts, and uncles. They survived the chaos of troubled families, the Depression, the considerable anti-Semitism of their time, and, in the case of every uncle and my dad, service during wartime.

Back to me, I met many prominent and impressive people and tangled with some scoundrels, too. My contact with others, including my patients, taught me important lessons.

I was lucky in every feature of this, tried to make the good from the bad, had help along the way, and fashioned myself into the kind of person I wanted to be, even though I am still imperfect. I have answered the question to give you more of my history since you will all be my survivors.

And yet, as much as my professional attainments meant a lot when they happened, they mean much less now. I knew I was never a great man but tried to be a good one. I made a good living and have helped my children financially with some of it. I made sure my relatives benefitted when I came into an unexpected legacy from my Aunt Florence.

One of the personal accomplishments of which I am most proud is that I got past the financial preoccupations of my parents. Living your own life, not the one you inherit, is essential. I am also happy my children are friends, and my brothers have a relationship. To the good, I have their friendship and love, as they have mine.

I also helped with the lives of my mother and my brothers, Eddie and Jack. If I were religious, Ed’s life is something I’d call a miracle. I had a hand in influencing this, but his courage and willpower were the determining factors in surviving a challenging time.

Jack’s growth and self-awareness were also unexpected but remarkable. These things have lasting value to me.

Within the past few years, it occurred to me that I was part of the luckiest generation in the history of the world. We had decent-enough parents, a safe place to live if we were white, and grew up in the world’s most influential and prosperous country — one with affordable advanced education and financial support for that education.

Those with adequate intellectual skills could advance and do better than their parents. The air was clean, and none of my friends fought in wartime. Nearly everything was possible for us.

So what else matters now? To show love to all of you and be as kind as I can in the way I live. To live in the hope of a better world for you than sometimes seems probable. Finally, to do my part in making it so.

I don’t expect to be remembered except by all of you. Of course, some patients and my dearest friends will think of me from time to time, and others might come across my name here and there for a while, but I never shot for that. I imagine you will tell stories about me, at least occasionally. Some will be funny, especially those about whatever you find amusing or peculiar in me.

Think of me laughing with you.

Much is out of my control, as it is for the rest of humanity. Thus, I hope to grow in acceptance of whatever is to come. We are all participants in a giant relay race. That is enough.

Your love means the world to me. You have all mine.

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The top photo is a Painted and Sealed Message in a Bottle with Messages of Multiple Authors painted by Peer Kyle, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The painting below it is Helgoland in Moonlight by Christian Morgenstern, 1851, sourced from History Daily. An Untitled 1959 painting by Mark Rothko comes from the Stanley Museum, U of Iowa. It is followed by Arizona Sunset on a Train Trestle, late July 2020, the work of Laura Hedien with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. This gallery finishes with another Rothko from the Stanley Museum, U of Iowa: Untitled, 1968.

August 7, 2022

Men Who May Be Trouble for You: Five Signs of How to Spot Them

How do we know when an attractive person might not be right for us?

Here are some suggestions with visual aids for identifying men to avoid.

1.

The fellow above is up in the air, feet not close to the ground. He believes he possesses many ideas and schemes to make him rich, but few, if any, are realistic.

Such people tend not to take responsibility, instead blaming others for the endless failures of plans whose time never comes. Take special care not to lend these fellows money. The promise of sure-fire success is usually too good to be true.

2.

We live in a world where drugs and alcohol are everywhere. Numerous websites list the signs of alcoholism.

Some alcoholic men are charming, hold down decent jobs, and tell you they can quit at any time. Denial is a hallmark of the condition. Unfortunately, as the old play on words tells us, “Denial is not a river in Egypt.”

The addiction can creep up and overtake life’s every aspect but is challenging to reverse. The ancient Chinese proverb states, “First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the man.” Women, too.

3.

The sculpture depicts a man who cannot keep his pants on. While a healthy sex life is an evolutionary necessity, I have met ladies who knew the totality of their worth beyond appearance and allure. They also desired respect for their intellect, artistic giftedness, career, sensibility, and kindness.
 
Once past the honeymoon stage, a relationship must include more than the flesh. You might want to find out early whether the gent considers you more than a plaything unless you conceive of that as an acceptable long-term role.

4.

If you wish your male partner to leave you alone and focus on his career, the chap above is the man for you.

Whether he is interested or capable of offering more than a paycheck remains an open question. Nor will the preoccupied gentleman share in the responsibility and joy of parenting his children.

The sculpture is intended to represent any man standing near and viewing it. The nameplate behind the bronze figure in the right corner of the photo features the following poem by Philip Levine:

They said I had a head for business
They said to get ahead
I had to lose my head.
They said be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said,
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.

Reading it on site requires a position similar to the one displayed by the incomplete metal man in front of you. The viewer bends over just behind the thing he imitates.

5.

In a well-functioning twosome, we must listen to our lover.

Many people attempt to impress by speaking. More than a few seek to influence another.

Of special value is a rarer person who listens with quiet intensity. Such a one evaluates the moment and what the other needs rather than jumping forward for the next thing he wishes to utter. Slowing the conversation and thinking through what has been said allows him to learn more.

Beware of anyone who talks over (or interrupts you) with regularity. It is a matter of incivility and disrespect in failing to allow you to finish your thought.

Words needn’t collide. In some moments, silence draws us closer. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, understood there were limits to what speech could communicate by itself. His most famous quote was this:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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The top sculpture photo is called Slight Uncertainty by Michael Trpak. It is located in Prague. The picture below it shows Two Friends Enjoying Their Belgian Beer in 1971, sourced from History Daily. The next figure of the Man Who Can’t Keep His Pants On is by Jean-Louis Corby. It is followed by Corporate Head by Terry Allen, at the Ernst and Young Plaza in Los Angeles. Finally, Le Silence (An Homage to Salvidor Dali).