[pachyderm]

Almost endless article, too -- 8 pages:

"All those years, all that money, all that unrequited love. It began way back when I was a child..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/ma...nted=1&_r=1&hp

[Perna]

"To this day, I’m not sure that I am in possession of substantially greater self-knowledge than someone who has never been inside a therapist’s office."

Okay, I'm sorry, but if you've been in therapy for 45 years and can't answer that, then you almost deserve to be fleeced. Why does one keep going if one isn't getting any payback?

[Elana05]

Originally Posted by Perna

"To this day, I’m not sure that I am in possession of substantially greater self-knowledge than someone who has never been inside a therapist’s office."

Okay, I'm sorry, but if you've been in therapy for 45 years and can't answer that, then you almost deserve to be fleeced. Why does one keep going if one isn't getting any payback?

Good point, Perna.
Ok, I didn't read the article yet... But, really? Omg. I know a huge deal more about myself than I did 3 years ago when I started therapy. I don't think its meant to be an expensive hobby. If it ain't workin' for ya after a year, switch therapists.

That person lives in a different world than I do.

[perpetuallysad]

Well, I tried reading it and sort of got put off. She mostly just seems to want to be critical of others and not really take anything on herself. Plus, as Perna points out, who the **** goes to therapy for 45 years without learning anything?

Sorry I couldn't make it through. Unfortunately, I think those who do may add to the already high number of people who feel therapy is a sham.

[Rhiannonsmoon]

Originally Posted by Perna

Okay, I'm sorry, but if you've been in therapy for 45 years and can't answer that, then you almost deserve to be fleeced. Why does one keep going if one isn't getting any payback?

Sorry no disrespect to anyone at all...it's just that Perna says it how it is and doesn't pull punches...and sometimes what she says is so profoundly obvious that I have to laugh at her delivery...

[Ygrec23]

I don't know. I thought it was a good article, but very revealing about the writer. To restate the obvious, if you feel compelled to go to therapy for forty-five years (!) there's really something wrong with you. Something that none of your therapists is addressing. It could be that what's "wrong" with you is temperamental, i.e., inherited and genetic. Which isn't going to be helped by traditional therapy. But the holdovers from the old days (in terms of therapists) just don't have that in their world view. I wouldn't ever DREAM of seeing a therapist who's eighty years old!

The above comes from personal experience. In my twenty-five years in therapy the problem was mine, all mine. I'm not quite sure what kind of metaphor I should use here, but in a way it was kind of like having my head full of concrete. Able, literally, to "hear" the comments a therapist said, and to remember them, but not able (at all) to absorb them and process them and react to them. One therapist in the early eighties compared me to someone with catatonia, looking me straight in the eyes. And all I could do was register the comment and say uh-huh. The defenses I built up as a small child were/are so incredibly powerful and pervasive that in the relatively old days I could sense vaguely that in some way something big somehow was wrong, but even with the help of a therapist I couldn't think about myself, my history, or even the pain I felt. The writer of the article sounds not only articulate but reasonably self aware, so that may not be her problem. But if anyone goes to therapy for forty-five YEARS, something's wrong somewhere.

[elliemay]

..."Psychoanalysis is about what two people can say to each other if they agree not to have sex.”

That is hilarious. One of the best and most glib summaries of therapy I have ever heard.

[Perna]

Originally Posted by Ygrec23

But if anyone goes to therapy for forty-five YEARS, something's wrong somewhere.

I don't agree with that, necessarily; I was in therapy for 18 years with the same therapist, with 9 more years inbetween my two bouts, so sort of 30 years and I couldn't/wouldn't do it any other way if I were doing it again? I just object to going if you're not getting or not sure you're getting anything from it. I was definitely getting help from my therapy, growing up/into myself and don't know how it could have been done differently as I spent 25+ years not growing up in the first place.

I believe individual, discreet problems can be helped with short-term therapy but life problems that haven't been addressed in 25 years, I don't know why therapists think those are going to be helped in 10 sessions or something. I don't mind that this woman went to therapy for 45 years, just that she did so "mindlessly" and didn't get anything out of it. She may be articulate but she strike me as not being too "bright"?

Ygrec23, I can relate to what you are saying. More than a few times I have been told I have a personality not conducive to therapy. Again and again I was told I make things too difficult; I don't understand. I have debated with myself whether I was mentally defective or if the therapists were incapable of explaining themselves is terms I could understand.

This lady in the article was not satisfied with her life. I do believe something was wrong. Perhaps she was part of the problem in therapy. The therapist should have told her if that was the case.

One thing I am sure of is no therapist ever told me I had to have more intelligence to be his/her client.

[(JD)]

Maybe.... she is still reeling with a mental illness that isn't "curable."

Maybe...she didn't put anything into the therapy so she didn't get anything out of it. (Therapy IS work, as we all know.)

Maybe...the therapist didn't know what he/she was doing in the first place.

Maybe...the therapist was just unethical and took her money because she wanted someone to rant to.

[Rhiannonsmoon]

Which therapist would heal a regular income?

[Ygrec23]

Originally Posted by TheByzantine

Ygrec23, I can relate to what you are saying. More than a few times I have been told I have a personality not conducive to therapy. Again and again I was told I make things too difficult; I don't understand. I have debated with myself whether I was mentally defective or if the therapists were incapable of explaining themselves is terms I could understand.

This lady in the article was not satisfied with her life. I do believe something was wrong. Perhaps she was part of the problem in therapy. The therapist should have told her if that was the case.

One thing I am sure of is no therapist ever told me I had to have more intelligence to be his/her client.

Dear Byz,

No therapist ever told me that I have a personality not conducive to therapy, but I really didn't. I truly resent the way they took my money and did not give me anything in return. I've never heard or seen a diagnosis, I've never heard from a therapist that they just can't get through to me (which was the truth). I would have had much more respect for a therapist who, after (say) six months, told me that I was wasting my time, which I was.

I NOW feel able to go back to therapy and make things happen, which for me is quite new. It's the result of the terrible times I've been through over the past three years. The pain has been so intense that I've been absolutely forced to start drilling through some of those defenses that until recently have just been too tough for me. It's true that I don't know what I'm doing, but I do feel that I'm doing something. And I believe that with a therapist's help, now, I'll be able to fix things to the point, at least, where daily life isn't so awful.

Take care.

[Ygrec23]

In my post of yesterday, August 6 (#13 in this thread), I think I was unfair to my previous therapists, or at least some of them. I think it's a good bet that they saw me as so fragile, so ready to fall off the edge of the cliff, that they felt they were doing good just by supporting me. I guess they had the feeling that it was better to try to keep me functioning in the real world than to shake me up with serious therapy and risk my being in a hospital for quite some time. The last words of an eight-year therapist to me before my moving to Japan, were "don't commit s*****e." (She STRONGLY disapproved my leaving New York.) I had never mentioned the subject to her and, at that time, had never thought about it. So I really shouldn't have condemned them yesterday as money grubbers.

[ringtailcat]

After reading this article, a couple of things stand out:
With many of the p-docs/p-ologist she when to, she gave a version of her history that she thot they wanted to hear, including whatever style she intuited that they used.
In the end she alludes to therapy being an addiction and that altho she has stopped for now, she recognizes that she may go back to it some day.

So, I wonder, if she had been honest about things (as she was with the last person she saw) earlier in her life if the outcome would have been different?