December 5, 2009
Jobless Britons are to be offered therapy to help them get back into work, under a “talking treatment” programme to be announced by the government over the next few weeks. On Monday the Department for Work and Pensions will announce that mental health co-ordinators will be based in Jobcentres. The…
November 18, 2009
Situated among the countless arts organizations in New York City are enclaves of passionate culture hounds who gather under the auspices of psychoanalytic training institutes. “There are approximately 38 (such institutes) in Manhattan alone,” notes Alan Grossman, LCSW, director of the NY Counseling Center’s Training Institute. Joan Erdheim, PhD, President…
October 27, 2009
I’ve only recently come across the Philoctetes Center in New York The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination was established to promote an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of creativity and the imaginative process. They have a public programme of events most of which are archived…
May 8, 2009
Season 2 of In Treatment is already underway in the US – Paul has 4 new clients and has decided that his sessions with Gina are therapy and not the confused hybrid of therapy and supervision from Season 1. What I like about the series is that it gives some…
January 26, 2009
This is my contribution (or should I say Adam Phillips’ contribution) to the current end-of-the-world scenario we appear to be in the midst of right now. Whether or not there is a gene for worrying — or indeed a gene for being a geneticist — a psychoanalytic story about worrying…
October 20, 2008
Let’s imagine that disappointment is a useful refuge, so that once you feel disappointed you know where you are. This is one version. The other version is that there’s a life organised to avoid the possibility of disappointment. And then the question would be, what’s the big problem with disappointment?…
October 14, 2008
Every now and then a learning opportunity presents itself that’s simply too compelling to ignore. Take this article from Saturday’s New York Times – Playing Role Reversal with my Therapist by Julianna Baggott. At first I thought it was a piece of fiction – but further exploration revealed this to…
September 16, 2008
Nothing promotes excess like talking about excess – Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips talks about excess (extravagant violations of law, decency and morality) in The Essay on BBC Radio 3 every night this week. In the first episode (15 minutes) he asks is our appetite by nature excessive – and makes a…
August 31, 2008
There is an outdated idea, based on superficial appearances, that a patient’s sufferings result from a kind of ignorance, and that if only this ignorance could be overcome by effective communication . . . a recovery must follow. But the illness is not located in the ignorance itself, but in…
April 12, 2008
Wandering around cyberspace this week looking for interesting podcasts to take with me on the flight to New York at the end of the week brought me to these conversations with Adam Phillips. In BBC Radio 4’s Open Book Phillips talks about his most recent book Side Effects and in…
