Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton, the founder of the School of Life, is heavily influenced by psychodynamics. This is a recent interview in which he talks about:

"What is love? How do we navigate heartbreak? Why is our childhood so informant on the rest of our lives? How do we sit with ourselves? And while we’re at it - what actually is the meaning of life? Alain talks me through why we experience the ‘ick’, the emotional burdens parents project onto their children, and how breakdowns can be breakthroughs. He also helps me understand better my own relationship, examining how attachment styles and past experiences can shape the way we love."

... and the relation with his own father. Well worth your time!

Andre Agassi's Father

I'm subscribed to various newsletters. One of them being Billy Oppenheimer's. In his latest edition, he writes about Andre Agassi and his father, which is a moving story that made me think.

You can read it here under the subtitle "Few Of Us Are Granted The Grace To Know Ourselves, And Until We Do, The Best We Can Do Is Be Consistent": https://billyoppenheimer.com/september-29-2024/

"My dad had been in the ground for just thirty-six hours or so. But life goes on."

Another newsletter I'm subscribed to is Craig Mod's. He writes a lot about walking in Japan, writing, and publishing. In his latest issue, he wrote the story about how he met Kevin Kelly and burying his father. It's very thought-provoking. You can read it here: https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/194/

Neuroscience and psychoanalysis seem like an odd pair. But they are not - at least to Mark Solms, the founder of Neuropsychoanalysis. In this video, I dive into the first chapter of his book “The Hidden Spring”, where he summarises his fascinating findings on the neurobiology of dreams and much more.

"The Hidden Spring" by Mark Solms

The book that was the source for the new video I just published is Mark Solms's "The Hidden Spring". It was one of the books I read in July (you can listen to the podcast here) and particularly the first chapter on his research on dreams was absolutely fascinating. Of course his book is about more than "just" that. He dives deep into the origins of consciousness and suggests that we developed consciouness to feel feelings. It's a difficult read but I recommend it.

Bookish Updates

• I started reading "Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy" by Alessandra Lemma for our monthly book club over on Patreon. It looks like a very solid introduction and I'm looking forward to diving in.

• I'm also going back to Karen Horney. I'm thinking about hosting an in-depth workshop on her work in the future and there are two more books of hers I need to read. This first being "Feminine Psychology", which is a collection of her articles from 1922-37. I'm 120 pages in. For the first 100 pages she reads like a different person! Now I can witness her slowly becoming more herself.

Subscribers can check the link to my Psychodynamic Library below to see all my notes and updates.

I've come across this video interviewing Nancy McWilliams:

One interesting little bit was her comment on perfectionism and personality styles.

If you've read her book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, you might already be sensitized to pay attention to personality dynamics.

As an example, McWillimas mentions the issue of dealing with perfectionism. You need to understand the meaning of perfectionism to help someone:

• OCD: You have to be perfect because you’re trying to be good, moral.

• Narcissistic: You have to be perfect because you want to look good, not be shamed, have a good image.

• Dependent or Histrionic: You have to be perfect because you're afraid of rejection by powerful others.

Psychodynamic Events

One of my Patreons alerted me to two interesting free online events you might also enjoy:

• I’ve been thinking about identity diversification a bit recently. This is an event I'm very curious to attend: Becoming a Researcher: The experience of psychotherapists starting a doctorate – could you be next?

• Another one might be interersting to understand the time we live in through a Jungian lense: Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Mindlessness: The Shadow of Thinking

Bookish News

You can find all the details in my Psychodynamic Library, my Notion database of all the books I’ve ever read. Sign up for my newsletter to receive it in your in box:

Subscribe now

• I'm currently reading Erich Fromm's "The Art of Loving" for our Patreon book club. It didn't catch me on the first 40 pages but now it seems to be getting more interested.

• I'm also reading Jessica Benjamins's "Bonds of Love". It's a suprisingly interesting book to read along "The Art of Loving" as it is also about domination, submission, and recognition. It seems to be more psychodynamic rich than Fromm.

• I've finished reading W. R. D. Fairnbairn's "Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality" and it's been such an interesting read! A wonderful way to better understand the beginnings of object relations theory in combination with Melanie Klein's work and a few new interesting concepts. There will definitely be a podcast/video about this but it'll take some time.

• I've finished the article "The Neuroscientific Underpinnings of Psychoanalysis" by Mark Solms. Now I'm re-reading it to solidify my notes and understand better. Great combination of science and psychoanalysis.

Best wishes, Alina

The result was that most of you just want me to keep doing what I'm already doing: Sharing interesting things I find. Nothing easier than that 🫡

So today, I'll share my notes on another article I came across through a mention in McWilliams's book Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (p. 245f).

📚 What I'm currently reading: The Illusion of Mental Health. An older (1993) article by Shedler, Mayman, and Manis. You can find it here: 

https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20Mayman%20&%20Manis%20(1993)%20Illusion%20of%20Mental%20Health.pdf

I'll give you my interesting take-aways below 👇

Three short take-aways

1. Denying stress doesn’t mean it’s not there (and more importantly: it still affects us)

2. If stress cannot be perceived consciously because it is defended against, it shows in the body and may be a risk factor for physical illness

3. When it comes to self-report questionnaires: Are we assessing mental health - or just denial?

Three long take-aways

1. Psychodynamics + the Heart

In last week’s newsletter, I shared a podcast about psychodermatology. Likewise, there are theories and research about the psychodynamics of the heart and heart attacks. Interesting bits in this article:

“They concluded that defensive efforts to compensate for insecurity are at the core of the coronary-prone personality. Moreover, the rate of second heart attacks was reduced by nearly 50% among patients who received psychotherapy, relative to a control group of patients who received normal medical care.” (p. 1119)

“In principle, the more a person defends against awareness of distress, the greater the physiological consequences. This implies that for subjects judged distressed by the clinician, lower Neuroticism scores should be associated with higher levels of coronary reactivity (because lower Neuroticism scores imply more denial of distress).” (p. 1122)

2. Early Memory Test

“The clinician [of Study I] treated the memories as a projective test (like the Rorschach or TAT). He assumed that the memories do not simply represent factual accounts of real events. Rather, they are seen through the lenses of the subject's present psychological make-up. These "lenses" may influence the selection, content, and telling of the memories. The central issue in judging between psychological health or distress is how the person sees himself or herself in relation to the world, and whether the relations with the world are associated with good or bad feelings: Is the world seen as somehow threatening, dangerous, malevolent, or frustrating? Is it associated with injury, disaster, traumatic punishment, or frustration? Does the person represent himself as at the mercy of external forces? These kinds of representations of self in relation to the world may indicate distress. (p. 1123)

I’ve come across this in Adlerian psychology as well, where it’s referred to as “Early Recollections”. Probably Adler pioneered something and got no credit - again 😅

This also reminded me of Freud’s idea of “Deckerinnerungen” (= cover memories).

3. “Positive Illusion"

You’ve likely heard the assumption that mildly depressive people perceive the world more accurately than “normal” people, who are said to wear lightly rose-colored glasses.

This paper makes the point that this has to do with the “deniers” that mask as “normal” people. Truly mentally healthy people do not distort reality more than depressive people.

I thought that was so interesting and made a lot more sense.

Best wishes,

Alina

Help me create more helpful content for you.

Even though I have received many kind replies to my newsletter over the years, it still feels a little like writing into the unknown.

Besides your name and email, I have no idea who you all are.

I'd love to know whether you are psychotherapists or not, what you hope to get out of this newsletter, what you enjoyed so far...

If you'd like to shape what I create, please let me know more about you here: https://tally.so/r/woBzrP

Thank you so much!

🎧 Interesting podcast episode: In my work, I have often come across the symbolic meaning of our skin, often related to self-harm. I was fascinated to learn more about the field of psychodermatology, which is another interesting angle to understand the intersection of skin and inner conflicts:

🤔 Interesting thing I came across: If you want to write like Freud, now you can. Harald Geisler digitized Freud's handwriting from his many letters and turned it into a font: https://haraldgeisler.com/2013/05/08/sigmund-freud-typeface I bought a commercial license and if you're curious what it looks like, here it is: https://psychodynamicpsychology.com/freuds-handwriting (you need to accept cookies for the font to load).

🎥 New video on YouTube: This is an introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Specifically a (beginner-friendly) overview of her concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position. Click on the thumbnail below to watch 👇

Here are extra resources for you:

1. My notes on "A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States"

2. My notes on "Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms"

3. A helpful graphic

🤔 Interesting thing I came across: Did you know that Klein started writing her autobiography? I didn't. The Melanie Klein Trust shares the 30 pages Klein finished before her death: https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MK_full_autobiography.pdf

Compare this to the following excerpt from a Twitter post:

"I want to make you laugh. Partly because it's genuinely fun for me to laugh with you and see you have a good time. But also partly because I want you to love me, and I feel protected and secure when I can seduce you into hysterics."

Real self-awareness feels different. The realness vibrates through the soul and revives it. Check out the complete tweet the quote is from, it's worth it: https://x.com/DisaffectedPod/status/1790402285308191013

🎧 Podcast I listened to: Most people who are interested in Jungian psychology have heard of Dr. James Hollis, who has written numerous books helping people apply analytic insights to their own life. Here is a rather interesting interview with him: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-james-hollis-how-to-find-your-true-purpose-create-your-best-life

One passage I loved in particular:

"I've often said to people, this is not about curing you because you're not a disease. This is about making your life more interesting, where you realize every morning you get up, you have something profound to address today. Why am I here and in service to what?

Because if you don't ask that question, you're going to be in service to your adaptive postures from childhood as many people prove to be until the conflict within reaches that point where the suffering of the soul, psychopathology, is sufficient. I myself was cruising along in my 30s. I'd achieved everything that I wanted to achieve and was enjoying my life.

And then suddenly, inexplicably, had a very serious depression. And it took me a while to realize that I was asking the wrong question. The first question that occurs to a person under those circumstances is, how quickly do I get rid of this? You know, give me five easy steps or a pill for that or whatever. I didn't understand the real question is, why has your psyche autonomously withdrawn its approval and support from the agenda that you've been addressing?”

❓Questions of the week: Based on the Hollis interview, I've found the following questions stimulating to ask in the morning:

• Did I dream?

• What am I feeling?

• What is this in service to?

• What does my psyche want?

Best wishes,

Alina

While I can and have listened to horrendous, shocking, gut-wrenching stories in my consulting room, I cannot watch or read horror storries.

According to Instagram, many young woman are into "true crime" - and in this case I can confidently say for once: I'm not like other girls.

And still, I watched "Baby Reindeer".

WTF. 

Please be warned that it's heavy.

The depiction of collusion in psychopathology, the sometimes complex subjective experience of abuse, and the traumatic shame involved is on a whole other level - definitely recommended for any other psychotherapists in training to understand more deeply.

I desperately need to find out if any of my supervisors have watched it because I need to talk through the psychodynamics and diagnosis of the characters.

❓Question of the week: What is the difference between transference and projection? I feel like I should know this by now but every couple of months I forget the difference between transference and projection. So I noted this down to remind me, maybe it's a helpful refresher for you as well:

Transference: We transfer an old object from a self-object-affect dyad onto a new object = We relive relational experiences. For example: We experience the therapist as we experienced our father.

Projection: We ascribe unwanted parts/affects of the self to an object = We eject emotional experiences. For example: We perceive the world out there as dangerous ("Everyone is out to get you!") to get rid of our own aggression.

💬 Quote of the week: "I consider inner life an object of inquiry that has its own unique dignity and peculiar lawfulness. A prominent characteristic of such a perspective is the belief that everything that goes on — thought, feeling attitude, action — has many layers of meaning. Nothing is simple and flat in inner reality: there are no cardboard figures, no one-to-one linear causalities. These deeper layers of significance, which seem of little weight in the bustle of daily life, are what hold the self together in its inmost continuity and essence, thus giving coherence to one's life history. The psychoanalyst is the ambassador of a neglected reality-our inner life." - Leon Wurmser

Part of me is so excited! I've been dreaming, thinking, and planning for so long on how to make this possible for myself. Everyone I admire in the field is a psychoanalyst and I cannot wait to learn and grow into one myself.

And another part is bummed that it'll take me at least another three years to get my license. It's a marathon.

🤔 Interesting thing I came across: Talking about becoming a psychoanalyst... In her book "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy", which we read in the Patreon Book Club, Nancy McWilliams shares an excerpt from a letter Anna Freud wrote to a 14-year-old boy who asked her how to prepare for becoming a psychoanalyst:

"If you want to be a real psychoanalyst, you have to have a great love of the truth, scientific truth as well as personal truth, and you have to place this appreciation of truth higher than any discomfort at meeting unpleasant facts, whether they belong to the world outside or to your own inner person. Further, I think that a psychoanalyst should have [an interest] in facts that belong to sociology, religion, literature and history [...] otherwise his outlook on his patient will be too narrow. You ought to be a great reader and become acquainted with the literature of many countries and cultures. In the great literary figures you will find people who know at least as much of human nature as the psychiatrists and psychologists try to do."

📚 What I'm currently reading: I'm still fascinated by personality styles and have started diving into David Shapiro's "Neurotic Styles". So far it's a good read!

Best wishes,

Alina

"But have you tried sports?"

"Sarah seem to really have benefited from cutting out gluten, maybe that's something for you?"

"I heard on this podcast that 30min sun exposure in the morning really changes your mood."

Ah, advice.

We have a wonderful saying in German: "Ratschläge sind auch Schläge", which translates to "Advices (Ratschläge) are also punches/beatings (Schläge).

Whenever I find myself tempted to give out platitudes of advice a lá "But have you tried XYZ?" I become very attentive.

It often means: Something in the person sitting opposite of me makes me want to, for example (1) act on my own helplessness, or (2) not take them seriously and offer lousy advice just to get them off my back.

The experience we have when we are the receiver of "advice" is often exactly that: We feel not being taken seriously. We still feel helpless.

Most of the time we don't really look for answers. We look for someone willing to sit in the trenches of our questions with us.

💬 Quote of the week: This might be my favourite quote from Jung on seeking advice and what to do instead.

“… The thing that can drive away the evil is always unique and hard to find. […] One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is known. In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless—advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take up a hobby. None of that helps, or at best only rarely. There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.” - Man and his Symbols, Carl Jung

Best wishes,

Alina

And it has been revived, enjoyed, declared to have saved one's life 101 times.

The truth? Probably somewhere inbetween with a field as broad as this.

Andrew Huberman has made the rounds opening up about being in a three-times a week analysis for the past 32 years:

"And, I will confess, I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly, but I found a way either through insurance or through my own income, I’ve continued therapy with that same individual now for 32 years. And so I do, I confess, I do three sessions a week of psychoanalysis. Remote or in person. And I know people have a lot of, they do the other kind of eye-roll (...) when you say psychoanalysis. I think an exploration of the mind is extremely powerful. It has to be done with the right person." - On the Tim Ferriss Podcast.

A lot of "confessing", if you ask me. But it's rare for psychoanalysis to enjoy such a (tentative) public display of affection.

Some psychoanalysts have made it very hard to enjoy psychoanalysis. Covered in orthodoxy, living out the stereotype of the blank-screen - they were not helping.

How can something that deals so much with sexuality become so unsexy and stiff at times? Sometimes, psychoanalysts have been the worst thing for psychoanalysis.

Elon Musk shared his deep distaste for psychoanalysts in this tweet last week:

Sometimes psychoanalysis offers itself as the best opportunity to project.

And, as is the nature of psychoanalytic/psychodynamic thinking, the resistance against it has been thoroughly analyzed. 

You hate psychoanalysis? Daddy issues 😂

Freud has polarized people since the beginning. And that's ok. Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic thinking are not for everyone, it doesn't help everyone - especially if you were unlucky to catch a bad psychoanalyst.

I say all this, of course, with a great fondness in my heart because I'm in the camp of reviving, enjoying, diving deeply into psychoanalysis.

It's the most interesting thing I ever came across. I love this field and hope to contribute to dusting off those old books & theories, and share them to the best of my abilities.

Best wishes,

Alina

YouTube reminded me that I haven't posted in over 170 days... I'm still sitting on a script for Melanie Klein, so if you have questions about her theories you'd like to see me answer, hit reply. 

What I have been up to has been mostly (1) moving houses and (2) deciding to extend my training and also become a psychoanalyst.

📚 What I'm currently reading: In our Patreon book club we read "Games People Play" by Eric Berne this month. I've read another one of Berne's books a year ago and found Transactional Analysis so interesting. So I'm looking forward to diving into this classic together! There will be another live discussion we host for the book in 2-3 weeks, if you would like to join.

Othen then that, I dove into a book by Josef Christian Aigner called "The Distant Father" which unfortunately is only available in German. If you speak German, I highly recommend it! With my current obsession to learn about Triangulation, this book has been a wonderful read.

🤔 Interesting thing I came across: I've wanted to dive deeper into Winnicott for a while. I ordered his book "Playing and Reality" but haven't taken the time yet to study him in-depth. Then this event from the Freud Museum fell into my lap: https://www.freud.org.uk/event... In case any of you are also interested to learn about Winnicott in April.

Best wishes,

Alina

I've read Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", a discussion by Otto Kernberg, dove into some Fong and some Sanchez... and finally feel a little less lost.

You might say the reason I publish so few videos is because I get too excited about a new thing while doing research and quickly abandon my initial project. (I was tempted to just make a video about different unterstandings about the death drive but that would likely take months to put together at my pace.)

📚 What I'm currently reading
As you can tell I'm almost burried in books at all times at the moment. My first priority is our book for this month's book club on PATREON:

The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller 🎉

If you always wanted to dive into this classic but look for a group of psychodynamic enthusiasts to discuss it with, you'd love our little Patreon community. Join here: https://patreon.com/psychodynamicpsychology

Another incredibly interesting psychodynamic concept is that of triangulation (another YouTube idea right there... but I cannot get tempted!). One of my supervisors recommended a wonderful short book that has already paid for itself. Unfortunately it's only in German. But for any fellow German-speaking psychotherapists in training, this one is gold.

Best wishes,

Alina

The next best thing is coming across old footage on Youtube to see that they actually were living, breathing human beings.

Last week I came across this interview with C. G. Jung and loved it:

I shared my own notes with my Patreons.

📚 What I'm currently reading: My never-ending problem is I buy more books than I can read. I day-dream about disappearing for a month with the sole purpose of reading all of them...

• For our book club on Patreon I'm still reading "Neurosis and Human Growth" by Karen Horney

• I'm also reading "Psychoanalytic Case Formulation" by Nancy McWilliams

• As well as Peter Gay's biography of Freud

💬 Quote of the week: "The introverted philosopher, that is always carefully avoiding women, will be married by his cock in the end." - Jung in the interview linked above.

Best wishes,

Alina

What are you willing to give up to get what you desire?

It's not a secret that we hate giving up. Giving up sounds like losing, restriction, sacrifice. It fires up our feeling of FOMO and is directly opposed to our I-want-it-all attitude. 

Giving up has been on top of my mind for the last few weeks.

I'm contemplating to actually become a psychoanalyst. Right now I'm in training to become a psychodynamic psychotherapist but I've been eyeing the additional analytic program for sooooo looooong. However, it would mean a huge sacrifice in money and free time. Also potentially delaying a lot of developmental steps (like having kids).

Therefore, I've been asking myself: Is this really what I want? 

I've started journaling, reaching out to learn more about the details of the training, compiling spreadsheets about possible patient and time slots to make it all happen... and, yet, there is uncertainty. Because I'd have to give things up. Is this really what I want?

Do we even know what we really desire?

Figuring out what we desire (and we're usually ambivalent about it) is one of the corner stones of psychodynamic practice.

I've chuckled at the idea that I'd have to start the analytic training to figure out in my in-depth analysis whether I want it.

Anyway... And I just stumbled upon another published essay from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips that got me thinking about all this:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/02/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-giving-up-adam-phillips

It's beautiful.

“We calculate, in so far as we can, the effect of our sacrifice, the future we want from it (it is never clear, for example, whether a sacrifice is a plea or a coercion or both, a manipulation or a forlorn surrender or both). As though at certain points in our lives we are asking what we have to do to get through to certain people, or to get through to ourselves: to get through to the life we want. We are asking what we are going to have to lose to gain what we think we want.”

📚 What I'm currently reading: I'm re-reading Karen Horney's "Neurosis and Human Growth" for our Patreon book club. If you want to be part of our live discussion, join here: https://patreon.com/psychodynamicpsychology

💬 Quote of the week: 

"Because anyone who can satisfy us, anyone who can make us feel better, is going to be the same person who frustrates us and can make us feel worse, we are, in Freud’s account, fundamentally ambivalent animals: where we love we must also hate in frustration, and where we hate we presume we are actively being deprived of love, of what we want and need and could have.” - from Adam Phillips' essay mentioned above.

Best wishes,

Alina