Thursday, March 06, 2008

Shrinky Stuff




Behind me, a teenager is watching a Law & Order episode about a dead psychiatrist who was sleeping with one of his child patients. And his wife was a former teenage patient. Great.
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Here's a link to a new Psychiatry Blog, Frontier Psychiatry: http://www.frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk/
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Oh, and here's a grassroots mental health organization, check it out: http://www.everyminute.org/index.html

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And from today's New York Times, pointed out by one of our readers, Penelope Green writes about psychotherapists' home offices in What's in a Chair?
and with such a topic, we're brought back to HBO's In Treatment. I'm on hiatus, maybe tomorrow.


TWO Sundays ago, Lewis Aron, director of New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, organized a salon for his peers. The topic? “In Treatment.” Two hundred analysts showed up. “It went like this,” said Dr. Aron. “Someone would stand up and say, ‘Hi, my name is Judy X and I’m addicted to ‘In Treatment,’ and then everybody would say, ‘Hi, Judy!’ ” For two hours, the analysts discussed the various mistakes Weston makes regarding boundary issues, and one analyst broached the idea that the placement of his office in his home was the cause of his many transgressions.
No, I don't need a self-help group. I'm not sure if the Times article is more interesting in it's mention of the psychiatrist who had nude watercolors of herself in the waiting room, or the doc with the dog, training pads and all, in the office. None of the Shrink Rappers have home offices. Roy, however, does have a 28-inch monitor, and I have monitor envy.

14 comments:

Sarebear said...

What's in a Chair?

Usually some Bum.

(hee hee).

Anonymous said...

Perhaps one of you therapists would answer a "boundaries" question for me.

I have been seeing my psychiatrist for over a year for 50 minutes talking-therapy sessions (no meds). He shares stories from his life which illustrate points we are discussing in therapy. I understand I am the patient and he's the doctor and we are not "friends" though he treats me very kindly and we have a warm friendly relationship.

I recently found out inadvertantly without asking for the information (outside the office) that the partner he refers to is a man. This shocked me as my doctor has told me about his 30+ year marriage which ended when his wife died.

Because of my own transference it was a hard piece of information to "swallow".

Do I tell my psychiatrist what I heard because in some ways it does affect my feelings or am I treading into an area that's not my business and therefore is this off-bounds for discussion because it is his personal life? My friends are split on this. I feel like I am "withholding" from him regarding this issue by not telling him but feel awkward saying anything. I am not judgemental nor homophoebic and accept him for who he is regardless.

Anonymous said...

OMG, I wonder if the one analyst with the damn dog with traing pads and all was my ex-marriage therapist/psychoanalyst!!! Yeesh.

Anonymous said...

I haven't quite figured out how glow-in-the-dark cats relate to all this.

Of course, if a therapist had a glow-in-the-dark cat in his/her home office, that would be pretty cool. Although I guess you'd have to turn all the lights off to see it, and that seems a little, you know, inappropriate.

NeoNurseChic said...

Have you heard about this?

FYI,
Carrie :)

Dinah said...

Isn't that the same conference the NYTimes article mentions? They should have invited ME to talk after all the watching and writing and blogging....

NeoNurseChic said...

It's not the same because didn't the NYT mentioned conference already take place and only lasted 2 hours?Whereas this one that I mentioned is tomorrow and lasts all day.

I agree they should have asked y ou to speak! I can't imagine a room full of therapists talking about the show like it is some serious thing. Maybe if only to analyze how it is horrible...that's about as far as I can stretch how this show would be relevent to hold a therapist's conference over! haha

NeoNurseChic said...

Hold up - correct that - the one I linked to doesn't last all day - it lasts for 2 days! 2 days of talk about that show... haha

Anonymous said...

hey therapypatient....

It's bothering you, talk to your doctor. You can just say you stubbled upon some personal information of his and you feel weird or something. It is bothering you. Your doctor is a professional, you can talk about it, maybe learn something about yourself and each other, and move on to other topics.

jcat said...

TP : I agree with ladyk73. It's bothering you enough for you to ask your friends, and to ask here. So it's probably bothering you enough that you should mention it to him?

It sounds like it's not something that would upset you in itself, and that you have a comfortable relationship within the whole therapy bit. Also, it wasn't something you found out by digging around.

But it still seems to be worrying you....??

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one who disagrees and says "leave it alone"? If your psychiatrist doesn't want to tell you that he's gay, then he doesn't want to tell you he's gay. Unless this somehow directly (and detrimentally) affects you or your relationship, then I think it is beyond the boundaries. I think you should respect his privacy.

(Personally, I know that my therapist is 20 years younger than her new husband, which I find a little weird and slightly creepy. But I'm not going to go into a session and ask her how her Electra Complex is doing today...)

DK said...

Therapypatient - absolutely bring it up with your psychiatrist. If it's bothering you, it's best to just bring it out in the open. These things have a way of becoming bigger than they otherwise need to be if they're allowed to fester.

Roy said...

Generally, I would encourage my pt to bring something up that was bothering them, even if it was something about me. If I felt it was a boundary issue, I would state that, explain why it was something out-of-bounds, but do so in a way that did not discourage future questions ("While this is not an area of my life that I want to share with you, I am glad that you felt comfortable in bringing up with me this thing that has been bothering you...").

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the replies. I will try to broach it with my psychiatrist.

The reason my psychiatrist being gay has been bothering me so much really has nothing to do with his private life, but because of how this fact affected/affects me. I know that romance with my psychiatrist is out of the question, but over many months I've felt very smitten with him. He's the exact age of my husband and is the first person in my life to be really kind to me, plus he's attractive, funny, warm, empathetic so that's not such a strange feeling to occur. Perhaps if you put yourself in my shoes and consider how you might feel if you had been smitten for some time with someone and then suddenly found out that they were not of a sexual persuasion that would make that person a match for you, you'd understand.

A lot of my emotional support was coming from my psychiatrist and that feeling of support was rocked. It was really bad timing for me, because after working with my psychiatrist since December 2006 and determining along the way that the best course of action would be to leave my sometimes abusive, always neglectful husband, I finally gathered the resources to end my marital relationship January 3rd. Only 12 days later I inadvertantly found out the (same sex) name of my psychiatrist's lover/partner! I really did not need that right then. I DID try to tell him about it at the following session, and the closest I got was an explanation of how dependant I was feeling on my psychiatrist, and he really seemed to understand that I meant "in love with" him even though I never came out and said those words. I beat about the bush quite a bit trying to communicate, and apparently he got what I was saying. Only about a week later he left for a one month vacation which felt almost like abandonment upon abandonment. Between finding he was gay combined with the vacation absence, I have felt more detached from him since we have resumed, and I don't even feel as though I am as emotionally as present as before. I forced myself to become "independent" while he was gone (and needed to!) and all that really did was drive my feelings underground.

Since I was abused as a child, I easily detach from negative feelings. Towards the end of last year and in early January I was really in touch with my feelings. Now I LOOK really good and happy, but I have been feeling that I am back to a self-protective surface happiness. I keep getting hit with short waves of intense pain and unhappiness which I shut off again. So it's a lot more complicated than what his sexual orientation is.