Saturday, June 3, 2017

Psychotherapy and Whirlpools



I'm trying to recall his name but can't? But suddenly I thought of when in my thirties I had this Austrian psychoanalyst and he was a trip looked like Freud, I kid you not complete with the accent, the bow tie, a leather couch I would lie on LOL. A wonderful cliche. Was sorry he retired in the middle of my work with him but he was telling me how as a kid swimming in the Adriatic sea there were these strong whirlpools and the older kids would dive down into them kind of a macho thing. It was like a rite of passage, he explained, "and when I was ready to do it, one of the older boys took me under his wing."
The older boy instructed him, "you will get scared right away and try to exit but that is a mistake because the whirlpool is very strong near the surface. If you push through that fear and force yourself deep into the whirlpools vortex against all your instincts, then you will find that deeper down into the whirlpool it looses it's strength and you can then easily swim out and away from it and resurface" - and that was his take on psychotherapy.
"There is no other way," he smiled.


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