The Homebound Saint

Social status has a secret influence on your life. If you’d like to understand how, the first thing you must do is to get rid of the image you may have of those who shamelessly flaunt their status: the ruthless social climber, the top-hatted mogul, the braggart with the golden…

I was on Interstate 86, heading east, returning from a road trip that took me across most of the country, when I entered Allegany County, in western New York. It was a place I knew well, but not as well as I might. I lived in Allegany County for two…

And how to get there. — If you’re one of those people who says you can’t understand how you can forgive when you’ve been deeply hurt, how you can be silent when injustice abounds, or how you can rest when you must make amends; I would say you already know how if you know how to…

Just because you’re the audience doesn’t mean you’re powerless over your subpersonalities — If you have dozens of people talking in your head at once, you’d want them to work together. Therefore, every form of psychotherapy seeks to integrate them. However, integration means something different when you’re at different stages. First, it means you want the subpersonalities to stay away because you don’t…

When I began doing psychotherapy, oh, so many eons ago, the first technique I tried that helped me engage with subpersonalities was Gestalt Therapy, the creation of Fritz Perls. …

The goal in Jungian Psychoanalysis is to remove the false wrappings of the persona — I had a sense of my own subpersonalities since I first realized my imaginary friends were imaginary, but it wasn’t till I started to read Jung, long before I thought of being a therapist, that the nature of these non-being beings became clear. Jung introduced me to the contents of…

I once facilitated a group for people recovering from severe mental illnesses. We met once a week, and they talked about how things were going for them. They tried to support each other. One day a member of the group came in and said his landlord was going to evict…

The Freudian analyst is always on the lookout for transference — Freud’s unconscious is a site of dramatic struggle between subpersonalities. The Id, the Super-Ego, and the Ego have been described as a gorilla and a schoolmarm fighting in a dark cellar, refereed by a nervous bank clerk. Deals are struck between the three, resulting in character and neurosis. Welcome to…