J ust under a decade ago, I began seeing a therapist who, for reasons that will become clear, I will refer to only as James. Work became my life while the rest of it quietly fell apart. Whenever something major like this happens to me, which is not often, I usually do one of two things: leave the country or return to therapy. I have been in and out of one kind of treatment or another since I was eight: school counselling, grief counselling, cognitive behaviour therapy , various forms of Freudian and Jungian psychotherapy — roughly in that order.
I would almost consider myself a veteran. Not that it always works, of course. Of my six therapists — a coterie of old men, young women, and one who had seemed ageless until he died of old age — most were forgettable, their words, pauses and therapy rooms blurred and confined to memory.
But I believe in psychotherapy as both a healing tool and an absolute social imperative. When I run out of money, it is one of the last things to go — somewhere between milk and the hairdresser. I had been half-heartedly shopping around for a new therapist for about a year, but following the breakup decided to knuckle down and find someone. None of them grabbed me. James came recommended by a friend who had just stopped seeing him after two years. The psychoanalyst Anna Freud daughter of Sigmund would have argued against taking her recommendation: though not unethical, a social crossover can create conflicts of interest.
However, there seemed to be no obvious crossover. And when I brought up her name on that first call, he quickly and correctly shut me down.
During our chat, I was struck by how curious he sounded, as if everything I said was new and surprising to him. James became my fifth therapist, and at that stage my most highly qualified.
