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From Archeology to Exercise

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:40:20 +0000

Digging Around In the Dirt

The version of therapy imagined by Freud was an archeological model. He is credited in many social histories with "discovering" the unconscious, and his rise occurred during a time in history when discovery was still the reigning paradigm. The discovery of the New World. The discovery of the arrangement of the stars. The discovery of pennicillin, chromosomes and sea animals beyond 20,000 leagues. Anyone who reads Freud's autobiography can see his mission, more than learn how to help people, was to write himself into the history books. To make a transformational discovery was paramount. Freud's entire approach had to do with discovery. He had his patients lie back, open their mouths, and free-associate. Let everything come out so I can make some discoveries. This was therapeutic in some ways, but not for the reasons Freud supposed. Cure or not, Freud sat back and took notes, hoping to discover things. Freud developed theories such as the Oedipus complex which were posited as discoveries. One has to wonder what discoveries Freud would have made if he grew up in China, with mythologies quite distinct from the Greek tale of the boy who grew up to marry his mother and murder his father.

The Medical Model

This relentless focus on discovery corresponds to psychotherapy's original insecurity about being a true discipline. Needing to prove it was as valid as other medical practices, it had to continue to appeal to the culture of the doctor. There needed to be an expert. There needed to be copious precautions. There needed to be a tumor to be excised.

The Capacity for Play

The contemporary approach to psychotherapy, echoed throughout Relational, Experiential, and even some Cognitive schools of thought is that therapy is about the opportunity to be somebody new, not discover an old forgotten self. Ken Wilbur talks about the fallacy of Romanticism and its quest to go backwards toward a more true self. In actually, we do not want or need to be two again, or five again, or fifteen again. We may have left-over parts from different ages longing for attention, perhaps release, or perhaps acceptance, and we discover them in our attempts to play together, therapist and client. Kinks, hurt places, stiffness becomes evident. Sometimes a sore spot demands to speak. But not in the spirit of recovering dissociated memories, though this may happen. It is more in the spirit of giving every undernourished or overburdened self-part its own chance to run and jump about.

Old Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:42:31 +0000

As we are watching our New Year's Resolution wash away like Dionysian castles in the sand, I thought I'd share this lovely rant from Henry Miller:

...One doesn't get to be an artist overnight. First, you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the least common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being. One can't make a new heaven and earth with "facts." There are no "facts" -- there is only THE FACT that man, every man everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his own destiny in his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous and patient...

- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

The Carrot Approach to Life, or the Stick Approach

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:09:21 +0000

If you need to get your donkey to move, you can wack it with a stick or you can lead it with a carrot. But leading it with a carrot creates a much more harmonious relationship. Many, many clients I work with talk about wanting to make an improvement in their lives. And their default method of motivating themselves is to use the stick. How can you recognize that you're using the stick? Here are some of the ways we brutalize ourselves:

Call your self lazy, stupid, weak, pathetic or something other contempuous, shaming epithet.

Flash negative images of what you perceive will happen to you if you don't change your habits: a life of lonliness, people talking badly about you, having to move back in with your parents, having nothing to report at the next high school reunion.

Depriving oneself of pleasure - no vacation for you, bring work home on weekends, don't have that fling.

All of these approaches involve a split between our feeling self and our commanding self. It's as if we become disenfranchised soldiers taking orders from a frightened, equally disenfranchised lieutenant. Our practice of becoming human means cradling that solider in our arms and listening to him, asking what he needs, and holding him accountable, yet with firmness and faith rather that brutality and shame.

The Fallacy of Positivism

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:00:56 +0000

Which came first — the optimistic philosophy or the abundant conditions that inspire hope? Were you raised in the hot desert sun with a punitive god? Or did you grow up with plenty, believing you had earned your blessings?

Keep Your Goals To Yourself

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:07:41 +0000

Dear readers: I've got big plans! It's going to be great! Just wait til you see what I'm up to! It's not going to be easy though. There's a lot of hard work between here and the finish line. In fact, the more I think about what it will take to get there, the more I feel like just telling you where I'm headed and going back to my humdrum like. But I'm going to resist! I'm going to do what Derek Sivers says and keep my goals to myself.

The Art of Resolution

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:50:59 +0000

Apollo, God of AmbitionSwearing off carbs again? Determined to get "the body" this year? Wondering if you'll keep these resolutions?

As a species, we are bound up in rituals of time. So it makes sense to be moved by the idea of New Year's Resolutions. Yet we all know that resolutions are often made by the conscientious part of us, without any conversation with the impulsive part of us. Does that mean we shouldn't make New Year's Resolutions?

Of course not. That would be crushing to the ambitious, Apollonian part of our souls. Here's a better idea: identify the accomplishments of the past year as landmarks of agreement between your fierce, hungry parts, and your tender, flowing, mirthful sensitive child-soul, who is no less lustful. So here's how to do it:

Write down your top accomplishments of 2010. To jog your memory, go through it month by month.
Identify the conversation. For the first couple of accomplishments, or all of them, if you're into it, write down what that accomplishment says about how your tough side and your tender side were talking to each other.
What's your tough side? It's that part of you that wants the most for you, even if it means beating you up for your most human qualities. It's the part of you that wanted to get into Harvard, that thinks you're too fat, that smacks you for that blunder you made last week. What do your accomplishments say about this tough side?
What's your tender side? It's the part of you that feels your way through life, crying at movies, wishing it wasn't Monday, delighting at seeing a new friend, dreaming about a great vacation, afraid to take risks sometime, but loves your friends and family.
By now this list should be getting you acquainted with a very human look at yourself. Maybe instead of swearing to quit smoking, you remember a time in July when things were good and you only smoked a little. Maybe you notice that feeling centered is going to have to be a part of quitting.

Maybe instead of promising a crazed new gym plan, you notice that you hate the gym and always have, but you loved that yoga class your friend brought you to. Maybe you could settle for a yoga body and leave the body-by-God to the genetically gifted.

For my own part, the urge to dive into a full-on gym routine to make up for the last week's indulgences is strong. But when I look at the accomplishments of the year, it brings back memories of real breakthroughs in my personal and professional life. This involved a lot of real reaching out to people, which went against my midwest WASP, stoic, do-it-on-your-own upbringing. If I am going to start some new gym routine, perhaps the lesson is make sure I'm not doing it in a "you're on your own" state of mind.

Looking back on your best moments...what path is suggesting itself?

The Wild Side: Looking at the Black Swan

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:13:04 +0000

Black Swan - The MovieIn Black Swan, the new movie featuring Natalie Portman as a perfectionistic and rising star in the world of ballet, we witness the underside of madness that is often the shadow cast by perfectionism. Margaret Little, a psychoanalyst of the early 20th Century, said that we all fear a breakdown. Our greatest resistance in therapy, she says, is that we will re-experience our original breakdown. Often experienced well before we had words by which to remember or organize them, all of us have experienced the outrage of abandonment.For some of us, it is the banal but nevertheless terror of being put to sleep alone in a crib in complete darkness for the first time. For others, it is greater or more subtle forms of abandonment, from never seeing the look of a approval in a father's eye, or blatant physical or verbal abuse that never gets healed. For the lucky people whose supportive families smooth over these outrages, the breakdown is a vague, wordless drive to stay organized and connected to society. For others, the breakdown is ever-looming. People are perhaps not to be trusted. One does not know if ones emotions are one's own, or anothers.

Such is the plight of Portman's ballet dancer. Perfectionism only carries her to the arena. To truly excel, she is challenged by her teacher to embrace a wilder part of herself. A raw, defiant, lustful side that has only lived in shadow until now. For any of us us to fully experience the liberation of adulthood, we must all embrace not only the structure imposed on us by social relationships, but also the amoral, greedy, broken-down part of us that is the core of our spirit. This is where many spiritual systems fall short. Societies need systems to impose order, and declare certain behaviors immoral, or against society. But we are still grappling with how to give outlet to the untamed parts of ourselves that often govern our lives without us really being aware of it.

Understanding Shame and Connection

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:16:25 +0000

Brene Brown is a wonderful speaker on the topic of shame and how it affects our relationships with others. She shares freely from her own experience, modeling the sense of worthiness she refers to in people who are successful.

Is a Psychotherapist a Mentor?

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:23:54 +0000

A central archetype in the Hero's Journey is the figure of the Mentor. I cringe at the idea of the psychotherapist as mentor, since it seems to give the shrink a little too much power in the Hero's Journey. My favorite image of a mentor is this: There is a Amazonian tribe, deep in the woods, that is completely cut off from civilization. In this soaking wet jungle, the main source of protein is a giant bullfrog that can only be caught by hitting it with a poison dart. You don't hit that bullfrog, you don't eat. So, a tradition has emerged in which a young man is not allowed to marry unless he can demonstrate to his father or another village mentor that he is trained in the of this poisoned dart. This is a terrific example of initiation, a phenomenon that some people say is sorely lacking in today's society. Some initiations do exists, such as graduating from college, or surving a year abroad. What is lost, sometimes, is the sense of parents closely imparting to their children some type of special skills or wisdom that allows them to pass on to higher levels. Teaching a child to drive might be one of these. What I hear from so many people is that parents may have been around, but there were not necessarily right there in the dirt with their child, making sure he got things right. So many parents from the me-generation seem to have focused on supporting their children's self-esteem, but not all are willing to point out exact strengths and liabilities in a way that gives a child real self-confidence. Is a therapist supposed to fill in the blank? Maybe so. A hardcore classic analytic stance might allow a therapist to reflect to a client that his insecurity about approaching people in social situations preserves a sense of safety and options. Interesting, but for some it might be found lacking. What if this is the moment where a client would benefit from a conscious yet hands on talk about how to enter a party in a way that facilitates connection? This a way of "being with" a client that is still poorly understood. One can't simply act as a dating coach, yet that moment in which the father passes on the technology is an important development step that can be achieved in therapy.

Resistance is merely the sign you’ve been called to Greatness

Benjamin G. Seaman, LCSW — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:15:48 +0000

I've often told people suffering from bad reviews that such feedback is the result of attempting something great. In the throes of Resistance, it is easy to listen to the demons of self-doubt. After all, as a client suffering from gambling addiction once told me, "The Devil speaks to you in your own voice." It is comforting to see that in the history of myth-making, nearly every hero has a moment in which he Refuses the Call to Adventure. The Refusal of the Call is not a sign of weakness, though it may feel that way at the time. If you are willing to believe that life unfolds according to essential patterns of human experience, then you must believe that in order for the audience to believe your adventure is all that great, they must first see you cower in gut-rendering fear. The shadow side of great ambition is that deepest of all questions for the hero: "Do I have what it takes?" In psychoanalysis, it is often hard to separate whether big dreams are a compensation for self-doubt, or whether fear merely attends all important quests and serves to keep us alert, humble, and respectful of the undertaking.

So what is it that lets us accept the Call? Sometimes it's when the earth is giving way behind us, and we simply have to charge forward to save our lives. Sometimes we cry out in fear and a mentor appears. We think we have to do things by ourselves and forget that every Indiana Jones has his sidekick. Sometimes we have to believe in magic — not in a get-out-of-jail free kind of magic that compensates for our defects. But magic of the sort that appears when a gesture on your part shows the universe you are ready to use the Force.

What Great Adventure are you resisting right now? And are you waiting for disaster to catapult you forward? You wouldn't be alone. Have you considered looking up your old teachers? (I mean this in the most folkloric way.) Sort out the difference between chasing your tail and a proper rain dance.