Sublime

By their questions and their attention, their careful probing and investigative stealth, the therapist tries – harder than anyone may yet have done – to discover how our presenting problem might be related to the rest of our existence and, in particular, to the turmoils of childhood. Over many sessions, a succession of small discoveries contributes

The legend of Theseus and the Minotaur is full of imagery and incident that lends itself to psychoanalytic interpretation: the minotaur - half man, half animal - embodies the essential conflict between ego and id; the labyrinth, which coincidentally resembles the sulci of the cortex, suggests the complexities of the mind. In 1927, Freud told an

In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me. • There was a mother* who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from

Children become attached to whoever functions as their primary caregiver. But the nature of that attachment—whether it is secure or insecure—makes a huge difference over the course of a child’s life. Secure attachment develops when caregiving includes emotional attunement. Attunement starts at the most subtle physical levels of interaction between

When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.