Letters to a Young Therapist (2 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Letters to a Young Therapist by Mary Pipher. Copyright 2003 by Mary Pipher
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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INTRODUCTION (CONT'D)

It is complicated work. Mark Twain described himself as "all of humanity crammed into a suit of clothes." Everyone who walks into our office contains all the rest of us. And yet, we all run from our humanity. We prevaricate and puff ourselves up. We fear admitting how vulnerable we feel. We try to hide our flaws. Over and over again, we have to learn how to simply be human.

In my case, I'm what a friend once described as a "clumsy brainiac." My mother joked I could write essays before I could walk. I am blind in one eye, moody, unfashionable, directionally impaired, claustrophobic, and easily tuckered out. And those flaws are just the ones I'll confess to. But somehow, I've found a few people to love me. And I know their flaws and love them, too. In fact, they are my close friends and family, the people I love the most.

As a therapist, I see myself as a generalist, the psychologist equivalent of my mother, who was a general practitioner of medicine. I am not a good play therapist. I treat young children by helping their parents figure out how to deal with them. I avoid legal work and sophisticated diagnostics. Specialization offers financial and professional rewards, but to me, specialization has always sounded dull. Thirty years is a long time to solve one kind of problem.

For me, the best trick is not to have tricks. When I attempt to be clever or sophisticated, I often confuse myself as well as my clients. Once when I suggested what I thought was a brilliant, rather mysterious, homework assignment, my client asked me if I was on drugs. Another time when I predicted the future in an attempt to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy, my hard-drinking client looked me in the eyes and said bluntly, "If you can predict the future, you ought to go to Vegas."

For the most part, my solutions to human problems have been simple ones--get more rest, do good work, take things a day at a time, and find some people to love. Of course, simple suggestions aren't necessarily easy and they don't always work. When they don't, I generally fall back on my belief in the process of therapy. Albert Einstein said, "A problem cannot be solved by the consciousness that created it." Therapy gives clients a safe relationship in which to explore their inner world and to consider taking risks in their external one. It provides them with another point of view on their own particular mixed-up universe.

As a student, I studied Carl Jung, Harry Sullivan, Otto Rank, Fritz Perls, and George Kelly. I read Freud, but I never much liked the idea that all good behavior was sublimation. I resisted his view that life was mostly competition, aggression, and sex--a very male theory. I was always attracted to growth and strength-based models. I respected the humanists and the existentialists--Abe Maslow, Rollo May, Victor Frankl, and Carl Rogers. I was intrigued by Carol Gilligan's and the Stone Center's ideas about the self in relationship to others. Even before Positive Psychology existed, I believed in the importance of focusing on good news.

When I began my training in 1972, psychologists were mainly testers. I learned to administer intelligence tests, personality inventories, and projectives, in which clients were shown indistinct stimuli, such as inkblots, and asked to report on what they saw. At first, I was fascinated by all those tests, but with experience I grew to prefer conversations as a diagnostic method.

I interned at the University of Texas Medical Center, which at that time had several pioneers of family therapy employed. I relished the liveliness of family therapy. Later at the University of Nebraska I taught one of the first Psychology of Women courses. In some ways I've swum in the mainstream, but I've also paddled alone. I had strong biases against family bashing, cutoffs, and blaming people who were not in the room to defend themselves. I urged clients to go home for holidays and attend family reunions. I never used the term "dysfunctional family" or recommended that anyone sue his own parents.

Even as a little girl, I felt protective of my own quirky family. I experienced my mother and father as rather incompetent, unavailable parents with many complicated problems of their own. But I also experienced them as loving me and doing their best. Much of my internal landscape comes from my conversations with them. I don't judge them harshly for their mistakes and I don't feel inclined to judge others too harshly either.

Perhaps because of my training in anthropology, I have always viewed mental health problems as related to the broader environment. Depression, anxiety, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol abuse, not to mention hyperactive children and eating disorders, arise from our deeply dysfunctional culture. Who can be healthy in a culture in which children watch movies about hookers and serial killers? How can we expect people to be happy when they don't know their neighbors, see their extended families, or have time for naps on Sunday afternoons?

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