Adam Crowe

'The big secret, for both consumers and providers of psychotherapy, is that there really is no such thing as generic "psychotherapy" per se: only wildly disparate theories and divergent techniques adopted by vastly varied clinicians with dissimilar personality styles, life-experience, training, values, goals, neuroses, complexes and world-views practicing what, only in the broadest possible sense, we have collectively come today to call psychotherapy. When someone says they have been in psychotherapy, or practice psychotherapy, the reality is that his or her experience with therapy may differ radically from another person's. Psychotherapy is not – and never will be, despite efforts to scientifically systematize, manualize, objectify and make it more formulaic – something consistently or reliably predictable, prescribed and predetermined. Rather, it is, as Rank and Jung understood, an archetypal healing process that is, of necessity, at its best re-invented with each new patient and by... - Adam Crowe

'In situations where a person has had significant trauma, which may include sexual or physical abuse, a feeling of safety and security is essential and it may be important to choose a therapist who evokes the most trust and security – and this may be a therapist of the opposite sex of the abuser. On the other hand, selecting a therapist whose gender is likely to stir up some of the same feelings you are in therapy to deal with can be helpful. And finally, though it may be tempting to choose a therapist of the same sex out of a sense that they can best understand what it’s like for you, it may also be important not to choose a therapist who seems to automatically understand you, since this could get in the way of thoroughly exploring and articulating subtleties of experience that may be important to address.' - Adam Crowe

'A male psychotherapist may be more effective for some patients than others; just as a female psychotherapist may have more success with certain patients than others. Part of this difference does have to do with gender and often unconscious gender psychology. Some male psychotherapists, for example, are fearful or out of touch with their "masculine" aggression, while others are estranged from their "feminine" side and feelings. Some female therapists either overidentify with the "masculine,"or devalue and dissociate it in their own personalities. This can all come into play during treatment, and commonly does so unconsciously in the form of what we call "countertransference" and other blindspots and biases on the psychotherapist's part. For example, when women stepped into the void left by men in the field of clinical psychology and other mental health professions, many adopted men's "masculine" perspective and rational orientation to treatment. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a... - Adam Crowe

'Males generally define themselves in terms of individual achievement and work and females more often in relational terms (Gilligan, 1987). In psychotherapy, therapists communicate values by their selection of material to question or to comment on, by the timing of their interpretations, and by their affective reaction to the content of what is said by the patient. Male and female therapists can view a patient’s life experiences differently, particularly if these experiences are gender specific (Shapiro, 1993). Many support the view that women should be treated by women in order to avoid being misunderstood or treated from a male-oriented perspective. This male perspective may oversimplify the effects of gender and minimize the necessary working through of ambivalence and conflict in the therapeutic relationship. Stereotypes and expectations about women affect male patients as well. A man may seek treatment from a woman in order to avoid a competitive or an authoritarian relationship... - Adam Crowe

'Comment: Anonymous on May 26, 2011 - 2:28pm: I am female and have never enjoyed a helpful relationship with a female counselor. I never tried working with a male therapist, but it interests me for one reason. Though it is a generalization, men tend to want to help solve problems and find answers when they hear about a problem. For this reason, sometimes I turn to a male friend when I want a new perspective or idea on things. If I just want to "talk" or "vent", then my female friends tend to be better listeners without offering solutions. As one girlfriend puts it, in her experience men hate to see women cry over something they can help her fix.' - Adam Crowe

'At its best, therapeutic love on the psychotherapist's part may be most closely compared to amor platonicus (platonic love), agape, philia or storge, the nurturing love parents feel for their offspring. But eros, which Plato spoke of as a "great daimon," is perennially potentiated in both parties. How to provide such therapeutic love without overstepping the physical or romantic boundaries is part of the art of psychotherapy. How psychotherapists deal with the unexpected and unbidden appearance of eros, in themselves or their patients, in the transference or counter-transference, can make or break the treatment outcome. So what do psychotherapy patients really need? Is love enough? No. But there is little doubt as to the potent healing power of love, both in treatment and in life. American psychologist Carl Rogers, drawing on the discoveries of psychoanalysis, identified in his "person-centered" approach the importance of what he called "unconditional positive regard" and "reflective... - Adam Crowe

'Therapeutic love cannot be sexualized or romanticized, though such feelings frequently find their way into the consulting room. When they do so, the key, for both patient and therapist, is never to act on them. But, at the same time, not deny them. To acknowledge, honor and reflect upon these passionate feelings, but not to impulsively act them out. Talking openly about such transferential feelings is essential for the patient and to the process. Transference (which can also sometimes turn negative and nasty) is the royal road right into the very core "love wound" complex. But becoming more receptive to love means being willing to gradually and painfully tear open the old love wound. This core love wound typically contains a repressed reservoir of rage, grief, hurt and sadness from the past, all of which must be slowly allowed to surface, flow and be consciously felt. But it also holds immense libidinal energy in the positive sense. This libidinal energy is daimonic, which is to say... - Adam Crowe

'Psychotherapy, in my view, is more soundly focused on what C.G. Jung termed individuation: the unpredictable, lengthy, labyrinthine process of becoming more whole. Psychotherapy is about finding and fulfilling our destiny: While for most this may include romantic love, marriage, parenthood, career, etc., there are others for whom fate or destiny has something quite different in store. Psychotherapy is about creativity: courageously claiming the personal freedom to express ourselves constructively in the world to our fullest potential. Finally, psychotherapy is fundamentally about acceptance: learning to accept ourselves and others, our fate, our responsibility, our existential aloneness, the unconscious, evil, the daimonic, and life on its own terms. Surely, this is a sort of love. Love of reality. Love of the world as it is. Love of all humanity. Love even of the dark and tragic, seemingly sometimes senseless side of life. And this is, for want of a better term, a spiritual love.... - Adam Crowe

'Comparing dozens and sometimes hundreds of possible dates may encourage a "shopping" mentality in which people become judgmental and picky, focusing exclusively on a narrow set of criteria like attractiveness or interests. And corresponding by computer for weeks or months before meeting face-to-face has been shown to create unrealistic expectations... Online sites may encourage "soulmate" search. The authors caution that matching sites' emphasis on finding a perfect match, or soulmate, may encourage an unrealistic and destructive approach to relationships. "People with strong beliefs in romantic destiny (sometimes called soulmate beliefs) – that a relationship between two people either is or is not 'meant to be' – are especially likely to exit a romantic relationship when problems arise … and to become vengeful in response to partner aggression when they feel insecure in the relationship," the authors write. -- Online dating fundamentally changes access to information. "In the words... - Adam Crowe

'“Authenticity” is another metric in the attention economy, measuring how believable one is to oneself in the process of broadcasting oneself. I’d expect that soon “authenticity” will be a literal metric, measuring the data trail one produces at one point of time with some earlier point to detect the degree of drift. ...a networked self could have some solidity that renders the performative nature of identity operate beyond questions of genuineness or authenticity. ...adopters can take solace in sending out their “Profile” to perform our cemented identity within various social networks. Once you accept that Facebook’s data collection roots you, you are “free” to be absent from social rituals but be present nonetheless. Welcome to the new intimacy. -- In Alone Together, Turkle fuses a section about sociable robots with a section about social media usage to basically argue this: social media accustom us to instrumentalized friendship, and once we are used to that, we are open to... - Adam Crowe

'It turns out that a broken heart is an actual medical condition. Broken heart syndrome occurs during highly stressful or emotional times, such as a painful breakup, the death of a spouse, the loss of a job or extreme anger, said Loyola University Health System cardiologist Dr. Binh An P. Phan. During an extremely stressful event, the heart can be overwhelmed with a surge of adrenalin and other stress hormones. This can cause a narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. It's similar to what happens during a heart attack, when a blood clot in a coronary artery restricts blood supply to heart muscle. But unlike a heart attack, broken heart syndrome is reversible, Phan said. But it's difficult to distinguish between broken heart syndrome and a heart attack, Phan said. Thus, if you experience symptoms such as chest pain and difficulty breathing, don't assume you're having broken heart syndrome – call 911.' - Adam Crowe

'One is practicing latent inhibition when one tries to ignore an ongoing sound (like an air conditioner) or tune out the conversation of others. This tendency to disregard or even inhibit formation of memory, by preventing associative learning of observed stimuli, is an unconscious response and is assumed to prevent sensory overload and cognitive overload. -- Most people are able to ignore the constant stream of incoming stimuli, but this capability is reduced in those with low latent inhibition. Low latent inhibition seems to often correlate with distracted behaviors. This distractedness can manifest itself as general inattentiveness, a tendency to switch subjects without warning in conversation, and other absentminded habits. This is not to say that all distractedness can be explained by low latent inhibition, nor does it necessarily follow that people with low LI will have a hard time paying attention. It does mean, however, that the higher quantity of incoming information requires... - Adam Crowe

'...once social media makes you aware of the ability to document your life as it is happening, it changes what you experience; you begin directing your life as if it were a documentary, choosing what to do in part on the basis of how it can be represented later. Once we have a channel, we live so as to fill it with content, and that content is more self-consciously molded to suit desired audiences and enhance one’s watchability—it’s “curated” with an eye to make oneself more followable, more relevant. The stake is our status as a unique individual; other people may be products of the system but not us; we are self-created. We don’t want to admit that we are being determined to a degree by our media use, so we instead struggle to do the impossible and deliberately communicate authenticity, try to communicate in such a way – communicate something so genuine and real and uncompromising perhaps – that can make ourselves believe that it’s not totally obvious that we are posing for the... - Adam Crowe

'The final antidote to false morality' -- "Contempt is the feeling that is provided by you when somebody is attempting to exploit you based on your virtue." - Adam Crowe

'These are the four critical points about the questions: 1) they must be interesting or intriguing to the students; they must lead by 2) incremental and 3) logical steps (from the students' prior knowledge or understanding) in order to be readily answered and, at some point, seen to be evidence toward a conclusion, not just individual, isolated points; and 4) they must be designed to get the student to see particular points. You are essentially trying to get students to use their own logic and therefore see, by their own reflections on your questions, either the good new ideas or the obviously erroneous ideas that are the consequences of their established ideas, knowledge, or beliefs. Therefore you have to know or to be able to find out what the students' ideas and beliefs are. You cannot ask just any question or start just anywhere. ...generally when one uses the Socratic method, it tends to become pretty clear when people get lost and are either mistaken or just guessing. Their... - Adam Crowe

'The madness of hoping for sanity' -- "We can’t have higher standards for others than we have for ourselves." - Adam Crowe

'Once you have analyzed something into its essential logical components, it is easy to see how to proceed, or lead someone else, from one to another. And, especially if you have taken wrong paths and made errors in your analyzing the thing, it is real easy to notice when others are going down a wrong path, and to know what they need to focus on in order to bring them back to the right path. The Socratic Method is easy, if you understand the logic of what you are explaining; it is impossible if you do not. So, if you understand that logic, what you do is you ask questions to see how much your "student" understands first. That way you know where to begin any explanations, Socratic or otherwise. Once you know the starting place, you have to know what the "next" thing you want them to know is. Then you have to come up with a question that leads them there. It has to be a question that is specific enough to be helpful. If the person gives a wrong answer, you have to decide whether there is... - Adam Crowe

'The mistake many with that problem make is thinking that the problem is "themselves" and they need more introspection, or more insight, or more "brain hacks." You need less of those things. What you need are goals with concrete steps that you force yourself to boringly take. I'm not against introspection, I am against masturbation. I'm against edging. The critic wants to be able to contemplate, to go to therapy and discuss and introspect and what he will do there is talk about himself, think about himself, identify patterns in his life, things that have held him back – and nothing will change. So then he will tell me that he has "a really good therapist, she really pushes me!" The therapy becomes an elaborate narcissistic defense, the promise and appearance of progress while protecting an at best artificial and at worst non-existent identity. "I want to learn why I am this way." Then what? Will learning why you made those choices be what changes your choices? You're still eating junk... - Adam Crowe

'Roughhousing requires your child to adapt quickly to unpredictable situations. One minute they might be riding you like a horse and the next they could be swinging upside-down. According to evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff in his book Wild Justice, the unpredictable nature of roughhousing actually rewires a child’s brain by increasing the connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex, which in turn contributes to behavioral flexibility. Additionally, roughhousing helps develop your children’s grit and stick-to-itiveness. You shouldn’t just let your kids “win” every time when you roughhouse with them. Whether they’re trying to escape from your hold or run past you in the hallway, make them work for it. Playtime is a fun and safe place to teach your kids that failure is often just a temporary state and that victory goes to the person who keeps at it and learns from his mistakes. Roughhousing builds social intelligence ... they learn to tell the difference between play and actual... - Adam Crowe

'The reality of self-ownership' -- "We must not manifest what we criticize." - Adam Crowe

'Lana del Rey, in other words, is a pop musician who has been manufactured as a pop musician. In that, she is no different from Beyoncé or Gaga or Madonna or any other musical act that has ever existed ever. Music is manufacturing. Music is performance. Music is spectacle. It lives and dies on its ability to combine sincerity and falsity in approximately appropriate ratios. And so, inevitably, it has introduced many an artist to the business end of the hype cycle. Lana, however, is different from her counterparts in one particular way: She found her current fame, such as it is, on YouTube. She is not a celebrity so much as she is an Internet celebrity. And, as an Internet celebrity, Lana-née-Lizzie is not just a product; she is a possession. She is, in a very real sense, ours. We, the Internet – we buzzing democracy of views and virality – created her. We have made her both what she is and more than what she is, aura and reproduction in one, a celebrity forged in the fire of 26... - Adam Crowe

'"Envy" and "jealousy" are often used interchangeably, but in correct usage they stand for two different distinct emotions. In proper usage, jealousy is the fear of losing something that one possesses to another person (a loved one in the prototypical form), while envy is the pain or frustration caused by another person having something that one does not have oneself. Envy typically involves two people, and jealousy typically involves three people. It is possible to be envious of more than one individual at any given time. -- Both envy and jealousy are etymologically related to schadenfreude, the rejoicing at, or taking joy in, or getting pleasure from the misfortunes of others.' - Adam Crowe

'What is the psychospiritual significance of the mythical labyrinth? The labyrinth can be seen as an archetypal symbol of the psyche and of what C.G. Jung called the individuation process: that twisty, unpredictable, tortuous, serpentine path toward wholeness and authenticity. The goal is to reach the center, the Self, the core of our being. But this is only half the journey. For having discovered the inner center with it's treasure, the "pearl of great price," is not sufficient: One must then find a way out of the labyrinth and back to the outer world – forever transformed by this experience. And this inward and outward expedition is repeated over and over, each time yielding new riches. Psychotherapy itself can be such a labyrinthine process. Patients often seek psychotherapy because they feel alone and hopeless, confused and abandoned, much like the unlucky lost souls caught in the mythic labyrinth. Indeed, as for those suffering victims, suicide sometimes seems the only way out of... - Adam Crowe

'Psychotherapy can often entail confronting a lifetime of accumulated shit. Psychotherapy patients sometimes experience the daunting task of delving into their past and dealing with their emotional demons in much the same way Hercules must have felt as he faced his disgusting, demeaning and ego-deflating fifth labor. For some, even taking the decision to seek psychotherapy is perceived as a failure or defeat. Such a seemingly impossible, tedious, menial task is tough on the ego and can be a severe blow to one's narcissism. But it can take just such a turn in life to teach us some healthy humility and diminish our neurotic narcissistic grandiosity. Carl Jung once commented that "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." I prefer to think of this infuriating and humiliating "defeat for the ego" as a traumatic yet potentially transformational process. We are insulted, humbled and, at first feel defeated by such untoward events, which can take the form of outer travails... - Adam Crowe

'What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. The unconscious is that which is unknown to us. For this reason, we humans are born not only with an instinctive fear of the unknown and of death, but also an archetypal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the psychotherapy process so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Fundamentally, the Minotaur represents the primal fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is deeply-seated in the human psyche. Indeed, the Minotaur may be seen as a metaphor for death and death anxiety. Existentially, death is a symbol of non-being or non-existence, and, therefore, death anxiety can be understood, in Kierkegaard's words, as the "fear of nothingness." As existential psychologist Rollo May (1977) points out, "the threat of non-being lies in the psychological and spiritual realm as well – namely,... - Adam Crowe

'When is therapy over? Who decides? And on what basis? What happens when psychotherapy goes on either too briefly or too long? In most cases, today's psychotherapy tends to be too brief, too superficial, and does far too little to psychologically prepare the patient for life after therapy. When the patient requires a more "open-ended" therapy, the question becomes one of duration: How long is long? Therapy addiction is not necessarily the patient or client's fault, but rather the responsibility of the psychotherapist. Psychotherapy, like everything else in life, has limitations. Paradoxically, recognizing and accepting this existential fact of limitation can intensify and deepen the patient's growth and development in therapy. For it is during the "termination phase" of therapy that some of the most important working through is accomplished. This termination phase is the final stage of psychotherapy. But many patients – and therapists – avoid it for as long as possible and thus are... - Adam Crowe

'Exorcism can be said to be the prototype of modern psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, like exorcism, commonly consists of a prolonged, pitched, demanding, soul-wrenching, sometimes tedious bitter battle royale with the patient's diabolically obdurate emotional "demons," at times waged over the course of years or even decades rather than weeks or months, and not necessarily always with consummate success. And there is now growing recognition--not only by psychoanalytic practitioners--of the very real risks and dangers of psychic infection inherent also in the practice of psychotherapy. (This psychic susceptibility is almost universally depicted in these films, starting with The Exorcist and most recently by The Devil Inside.) Counter-transference is what we clinicians technically call this treacherous psychological phenomenon, which can cause the psychotherapist (or exorcist) to suffer disturbing, subjective symptoms during the treatment process – sometimes even as the patient progresses!... - Adam Crowe

'The public is disenchanted with psychotherapy. This negative attitude has been exacerbated by the predominance of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is spuriously touted by its frequently fiscally motivated supporters as superior to other kinds of psychotherapy in both efficacy and brevity. Psychotherapists in training – psychiatric residents, clinical psychology, counseling and social work interns too are taught the same misleading party line. The sad result has been a gradual mechanization, dehumanization and reductionistic de-souling of psychotherapy. An estimated ninety percent of psychiatrists no longer practice psychotherapy much at all, relying heavily instead on pharmacotherapy. Ironically, the aforementioned mounting crisis within the psychotherapy world parallels a growing crisis in public mental health. The truth is, most psychotherapy patients need far more than what pharmaceutical intervention and/or cognitive restructuring – the two most popular "evidence-based"... - Adam Crowe

'The narcissist ultimately starves for love because he or she can never get enough in the present to compensate for the past. -- Pathological narcissism is related to narcissistic rage: a furious, reflexive, unrelenting need to repay any perceived slight or insult. Neurotic narcissism starts out as normal narcissism, a healthy, natural childhood need for attention and appreciation which, when continually frustrated, becomes fixated and pathological. Neurotic narcissism stems from inadequate, insufficient or traumatic parenting and resulting narcissistic injury, especially prior to five years of age, during what Freud called the pre-Oedipal period. Children at this tender age find any serious lack of attunement and attention – or certainly, any outright abuse, neglect or emotional, if not physical, abandonment – an insult, a psychological injury, a traumatic psychic wound which distorts perceptions of both themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. When children experience... - Adam Crowe

'Porn intensely focuses our mental and physical attention, uncovering specific emotions eroticized much earlier in life. Through our sexual fantasies, we attempt to master feelings of powerlessness, shame, guilt, fear and loneliness that have followed us into adulthood. Suppose our parents, teachers, or clergy used excessive shame or guilt to teach or control us. To deal with our resultant anger, we encode the shame in our fantasies, becoming aroused when thinking of ourselves as naughty or engaging in secret or forbidden sexual acts. We feel excited, for example, when punished or disciplined for supposed misbehavior, by being tied up and forced to have sex. Forced to surrender sexually to a dominant aggressor, we allow ourselves to enjoy the sex while escaping from the guilt that has haunted us through life. On the other hand, some of us respond to underlying guilt and shame by sexualizing the idea of becoming the aggressor, perhaps delving into themes of incest or other extreme... - Adam Crowe