Why do I write?<\/p>\n
I have been writing for a long time.<\/p>\n
Why do I write this blog?<\/p>\n
I really don’t know.<\/p>\n
Oh, I can give all sorts of rationalizations and reasons, but….<\/p>\n
There comes a time when many\u00a0therapists who have been doing\u00a0this for as long as I have, have to write.\u00a0 It is not just an impulse or an urge.\u00a0 It becomes an imperative, a matter of survival.<\/p>\n
I recently read this passage by Michael Eigen, one of the few writers I read that is still living, “I suspect there are many psychoanalytic writers who write from the depths of their beings, hoping to create a therapist who can cure them, or communicate through deaths with another living flame.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
What does a therapist do with all the truth and lies, all the impacts received from the patients he\/she sits with day in, day out, session after session, hour after hour?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I like to tell some patients, if appropriate, that I have had more therapy than anyone I treat.\u00a0 While this is absolutely true, there appears for me to be a limit on how far this has taken me.\u00a0 I have considered returning to therapy from time to time.\u00a0 I even had a patient who when my wife died had the courage to give me a card of a psychologist to see.\u00a0 The patient wanted to ensure I was taken care of, and she was concerned that I needed someone to talk to.\u00a0 I briefly considered the offer, but declined.<\/p>\n
In a novel I am trying to write there is a room where the main character goes at night.\u00a0 It is a consulting room where he is analyzed by all the dead, great therapists–Freud, Bion, Klein, Jung.\u00a0 Perhaps in my mind there is no one alive that could treat me except for myself.\u00a0 I don’t think this is arrogance.\u00a0 I have a particular way of working and a particular personality.\u00a0 I did once a few years ago go to see a psychiatrist.\u00a0 I carefully selected him from all of South Florida.\u00a0 I thought he would be a good fit.\u00a0 I had a particular thing that was bugging me.\u00a0 When I brought it up, he dismissed it as unimportant.\u00a0 I never went back.<\/p>\n
I consider what I do for a living, whatever it is I do, as a privilege.\u00a0 Patients come to see me session after session.\u00a0 It takes courage to be a patient and continue wrestling with oneself week after week. It especially takes courage to be a patient of mine.\u00a0 But I have infinite admiration and respect for the patients that allow me to be with them in the consulting room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there is a price to be paid, both by the patient and myself.<\/p>\n
I doubt the price I pay can be calculated or described.\u00a0 It can merely be experienced, and different therapists pay different prices.\u00a0 But here are some glimpses of what I imagine the price to be.<\/p>\n
In graduate school we watched a famous video of three great psychologists-Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls and Albert Ellis, all having a single therapy session with the same female patient.\u00a0 I recall how boring I found the video.\u00a0 It was like watching two people randomly talking in a room.\u00a0 I imagine that this would be how someone would find a session of mine if they could watch a video of it.\u00a0 But I now realize that this is probably due to the fact that what is missing from the video is the actual experience of being in the consulting room with a live patient.\u00a0 The experience is alternately jarring, deadening and otherwise.\u00a0 But it is definitely alive–if I can tolerate being present and open to the experience and impact.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0used to, and still do, think that being a therapist offers the unique opportunity to deal with my cowardice and courage on a daily basis.\u00a0 In every session there are moments where I have to choose to tolerate what is going on in the session or shrink away and evade the experience.\u00a0 Most of the time I act with courage, but there are times cowardice wins out.\u00a0 For all of us some experiences, impacts are more than we can bear.\u00a0 Hopefully on those days, I learn to grow my capacity for courage by experiencing my cowardice.\u00a0 Being a therapist is a continually humbling experience.<\/p>\n
I had a mentor several years ago.\u00a0 He was a brilliant psychiatrist who was truthful, courageous and honest.\u00a0He was always willing to think for himself and speak his mind. \u00a0But these qualities created problems for him among his colleagues.\u00a0 He would call me late at night and ask “Dr. Brody, why do they hate me?”\u00a0 He was genuinely disturbed by the hatred and vicious attacks from other professionals that his work\u00a0evoked.\u00a0 He would eventually commit suicide, the ostensible reason being that he had a\u00a0chronic, degenerative neurological disease.\u00a0 But I wonder if the other reason for taking his own life was that the price he paid became too great.\u00a0 How much hatred from one’s colleagues can any of us stand?\u00a0 After he died, several of his detractors gleefully posted his autopsy report on various websites in a final attempt to discredit him.<\/p>\n
I remember watching a movie, Equus, where a psychiatrist is treating a troubled teen who had committed some atrocity against horses.\u00a0 As the movie unfolds, it becomes clear that the teen is troubled\/possessed\/tortured\/fascinated by these horses and in one scene he actually blinds some horses.\u00a0 The psychiatrist desperately tries to “cure” the teen, and is successful.\u00a0 But the price paid is that while the teen is no longer possessed by the horses, the psychiatrist is now possessed by the horses.<\/p>\n
These days I consider the price paid to be just the price of admission\u00a0for the privilege of working with patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0It cannot be avoided or “cured”.\u00a0Which is, I guess,\u00a0one reason\u00a0I continue to write.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Every privilege has a price.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Brody<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why do I write? I have been writing for a long time. Why do I write this blog? I really don’t know. Oh, I can give all sorts of rationalizations and reasons, but…. There comes a time when many\u00a0therapists who have been doing\u00a0this for as long as I have, have to write.\u00a0 It is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}