I am a perpetual student. I read for myself and my professional development. I’ll share what I'm currently reading so that one can get to know me a little bit more, a kind of blog. Keep checking back: there might be something on my bookshelf for you; there often is my friend's homes and in the hands of strangers on the subway; and feel free to share with me what you're currently finding interesting.
10 October 2011
As I continue to do couples therapy, couples therapy based in attachment and bonding, creating safety and security, I have puzzled over 
the role of sex in relationships. I have asked this question quite actively with some of the couples I have worked with who were also struggling to find resolution to this dilemma in their relationships. I'm currently reading a book that is a great read on this particular question. The book is Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell. (Stephen A. Mitchell was a significant figure in contemporary psychoanalysis; he a founder of the movement known as relational psychoanalysis.) In this book Mitchell directly addresses the dilemma of attachment and sex: Mitchell terms these love and desire. Here's a quote:
"Romance requires both love and desire; in fact romance emerges in the tension generated by the simultaneity of love and desire. Love without desire can be tender, intimate, and secure, but love without desire lacks adventure, edge, the sense of risk that fuels romantic passion. Desire without love can be diverting and stimulating, but desire without love lacks the intensity and the sense of high stakes that deepen romantic passion."
Part of the answer to the dilemma for Mitchell is that the habituation that dulls romantic love is a protective defense against the vulnerability inherent in romantic love--some day our lover may leave us.
I haven't finished reading the book yet. I'm not sure this will be my answer to the dilemma. But I am grateful for the book which eloquently explores the question.
1 September 2011
It's been a long time since I read fiction that really gripped me. In my 20's I read lots of 19th century and early 20th century literature - English, Irish, French and Russian. In the last 20 years or so it's been mostly non-fiction. But I've found a new novelist whom I'm enjoying - Salley Vickers. She's a intelligent writer, the kind one finds on the Booker list. It wasn't until I began reading her that I found out that she had been trained as a Jungian analyst. The book I happened upon for my Vickers first was Dancing Backwards, and I found this perfect: intelligent, funny, and a character with an interior voice. The setting was one I enjoyed - a transatlantic cruise from England to New York. Settings are important to me. An earlier novel, Miss Garnet's Angel, was not one I enjoyed, but I slogged on, because it was set in one of my favorite places in the world, Venice, Italy. Currently I'm into The Other Side of You, a novel that explores the therapy relationship. But Dancing Backwards wins my award for a summer novel.
6 August 2011
I picked up a copy of The Flight of the Wild Gander by Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell has been one of my heroes since he appeared on the PBS series The Power of Myth in 1988. This isn’t one of the great books of Joseph Campbell – The Masks of God and The Hero with a Thousand Faces – this is more a collection of essays, but I am enjoying it, and it is giving me deep thoughts about dreams and therapy. This book has all the classic Campbell themes: the meaning of fairy tales, the origins and commonality of world myths, the role of poets and visionaries and shamans, the meaning of symbols, the sacred and the secular. I read, I ponder and dream.