#10 THERAPY BOOK CLUB

Sane musings on self-disclosure, binge-watching Alone & my current favourite podcast.

Hello friends,

I’ve had many a hilarious conversation with friends, patients and colleagues about our collective propensity to sneak a peak at whatever book lay half opened on our therapists’ desks, then scurry away to immediately acquire and devour it. Many years ago, my brother and I entitled this behaviour ‘Therapy Book Club’, a tag we subsequently attached to any time a therapist casually mentioned something in passing that we went away and surreptitiously investigated at length. IYKYK.

There are many reasons one might do such a thing - I’m sure there’s a whole post just in that alone - but I suspect we most often and ultimately do so from a longing for closeness. Therapy Book Club notwithstanding, little details about the ordinary parts of another’s everyday existence have a beauty to them that buoys my spirit constantly. What did you have for dinner? What outfit did you wear to that show? I find so much sweetness and intimacy in knowing what’s resting on the bedside or open in the tabs of the people around me. In case you’re like me in this regard, I thought I would try something a little bit different this week while I tinker away at a more long-form piece, and share with you just a few things I’ve enjoyed recently. Let’s be a little closer.

📖: Playing one's cards face up in analysis: an approach to the problem of self-disclosure by Owen Renik (DM me for the PDF if you can’t find it). A colleague sent me this paper recently, and I found it to be one of the most sane and pragmatic things I’ve ever read about self-disclosure. Renik acknowledges the plain reality that “everything an analyst does is self-disclosing somehow or other, and … every purposeful effort by an analyst at self-disclosure is likely to obscure some things about the analyst while it reveals others”. He also points out that elements of the more classical method designed to prevent the analyst’s intrusiveness can actually take up more room in the treatment than a position of transparency. In his words, “A reticent analyst looms large, occupying center stage as a mysterious object of interest.”

Renik advocates for the analyst to have “an attitude of willingness to be known by the patient”, while also naming the often ignored side effect that the exposure of our real selves to our patients can sometimes be frightening and distressing. He positions the analyst’s participation and personal influence on the treatment as an appropriate subject for collaborative investigation between patient and analyst, and highlights the patient’s unique qualification in identifying aspects of the analyst’s position that may interfere with the treatment.

Basically, it is a brilliant paper, with many relieving ideas for therapists trying to practically psychoanalytically without acting weird.

📺: Alone and Alone Australia. I know I’m like, many years behind on this, but this show is truly a psychologist’s dream. In case you, like me, have been living under a rock since the first season of Alone was released in 2015, ten individuals are dropped off in a remote part of the wilderness at the beginning of each season for an indefinite amount of time with limited resources. The last person remaining wins a huge sum of money. I love it because:

1. There is no camera crew: every participant is dropped off with equipment to film their own experience. The audience is thus saved from the heavily dramatised storylines of the average reality show; and

2. As a function of the lack of production, and their true aloneness, each participant is quickly and spectacularly revealed in their true nature. When faced with the realities of the wilderness, any falseness in the story they are telling about themselves collapses. Equally, those who are steeped in a steadfast, deep spiritual adulthood (which you know I love banging on about) shine, in both their successes and adversities. Interestingly, they are not necessarily those who always stay the longest, and some who endure for a long time manage do to so in a clinging, haggard way that seems quite void of spirituality. Nevertheless, I am moved by those with the humility to surrender themselves to the power of their environment with maturity, grace and genuine strength. Equally, I’m endlessly entertained by those whose grandiose illusions about themselves are swiftly shattered when faced with inescapable reality (like one man who professed himself “the baddest motherf*cker in this competition” then went home after four days in because his clothes got wet and he, a self-professed hunter and “alpha male”, couldn’t find anything to eat 🤣).

🎙️: Content People with

Meredith Farley

. Anna Freud famously encouraged aspiring analysts to expose themselves to a wide range of fields outside of psychology in order to become better at their work. My podcast preferences often err into the realm of business, and I think Content People is great proof of Anna’s point about how exploring in other areas of thought can make us better therapists. Meredith Farley is truly a genius-level question-asker, with a laser-eye focus on her guests’ particular gifts, idiosyncrasies and unique ways of using language to describe what they do.

As I’ve been listening to her interviews recently, I’ve been trying to figure out why I like them so much and it finally dawned on me: she is actually listening. She is listening so well that listening to her listen has made me realise how few people (even journalists, interviewers and media folk) are ever actually listening. When someone (like Meredith) actually does, from a position of respect and curiosity for the other, what can evolve is something fascinating and new - a conversation that sounds different to other conversations, containing different words to the ones so many people are in the habit of regurgitating, as its participants are invited skilfully to come forward with the real bones and detail of their unique expertise. If you need somewhere to begin, start with the

Jessica DeFino

episode.

Are you listening to/watching/reading anything psychology-adjacent that you’re obsessed with? Have you binge watched Alone? Did you wear a great outfit to work this week? Let me know.

In love, and the pursuit of a shared path to a greater truth,

Kate