On My Shelves

 The NY Times Book Review has a regular feature called By the Book, a Q&A with an author. I have published a book, though the NY Times has yet to discover me and I do read a lot, so here is my take on their questions: 

What book is on your night stand now?

Truthfully I no longer keep books on my nightstand as I no longer read in bed. And as you can see, my bookshelves are anything but tidy. Still next to me and on my Kindle I have a pile of books waiting to be read or in varying stages of being read:

Sarah Perry The Essex Serpent

Matt Haig How to Stop Time

James Lee Burke A Private CathedralAbigail Saguy What’s Wrong With Fat

Michael Eigen Rage

Francis Weller The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Michel Pastoureau Blue: The History of a Color

What was the last truly great book you read?

I come back again and again to Barbara Stevens Sullivan’s The Mystery of Analytical Work: Weavings From Jung and Bion. There is so depth to this book. I wish I had people I could read and discuss it with.

Or When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams. I love this book and have given it or recommended it to many women.

What is your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I love memoir. I am endlessly interested in the stories people tell and write about their lives. 

I also love mysteries and thrillers. They are my popcorn reading.

Have you read any good books on philosophy lately?

No.

What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?

I had a book about a man who sold balloons in the park. I don’t know the name but I can still see the illustrations. I also loved the book of fairy tales that my grandmother had and would read to me.

I had a book that had been my father’s when he was growing up — Cop: A Police Dog.I liked it more because it had been my dad’s than that I liked the book itself.

I read Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames. I used to go to the library and come home with armloads of books — everything from poetry to novels. I started reading biographies when I was around 10. The libraries on the Army posts where I lived didn’t limit what I could check out or how many books I could have at a time. So I read everything that looked like it might be interesting.

What books had the greatest influence on you when you were a student?

Man and His Symbols was published when I was in college and it made me a Jungian before I really even understood it.

What was the last book that made you cry?

What comes to mind first is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

And there were passages in Naming the Gods by Gary Astrachan that moved me deeply.

The last book that made you laugh?

I must be brain dead this morning because none comes to mind right now.

The last book that made you furious?

Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump. Everything about him makes me furious.

What’s the best love story you’ve ever read?

Like Water for Chocolate. 

Are there any psychotherapists that you think are also particularly good writers? What are your favorite books on psychotherapy?

There are indeed wonderful writers among psychotherapists. Barbara Stevens Sullivan is a favorite of mine. Michael Eigen. Christine Downing. Naomi Lowinski.

And if you could meet a character from literature, who would it be?

A friend of mine, Janice MacDonald, writes mysteries, terrific mysteries set in Edmonton, Alberta where she lives. And as it happens I am a character in one of her books, Hang Down Your Head. So I know one!

Who are your favorite writers of all time? 

Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Jung, Freud

What are you planning to read next?

I have a Kindle app full of books to read. I just started How to Stop Time by Matt Haig.

Getting bored? How about writing?

If you are at all like me — and I am very introverted — the charm of this quarantine/social distancing has long since worn off. In my restless search for variety I have increased the pile of books to be read, watched too many Netflix series and movies, and oh how the pile of knitting works in progress has grown. In the past I have talked about Personal Myth and the value of exploring one’s own. So how about looking more deeply into it and beginning the exploration of your own personal myth? 

Human beings are narrative makers. We remember ourselves and our lives in stories — stories we tell our friends, family, strangers, ourselves. When a new patient comes to me, I say “tell me about yourself” and await the story of this person’s life and how it has brought her to me. And if we work together for some time, that story will change so that the story she tells at the end will be recognizable as hers but different in some ways from the tale told at the beginning.

“The universe is made of stories – not atoms” —   Muriel Rukeyser

So, we swim in a sea of stories — our own and those of the ones around us. And we shape our lives around the story we tell ourself is ours, the story that we live. Think of a person you no doubt know whose life could be summed up in the song title, “I would do anything for love” — can you begin to see the story he or she is living? And how might that person be able to change the course of the story, write a new chapter if only she knew it was what she is living?

“The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it….” Jules Renard 

Exploring personal myth is one way to discover the story. 

In the last 20 years or so, a plethora of books have been written on the subject of personal myth. Of the lot of them, 2 stand out for me as better than the rest:

James Pennebaker: Writing to Heal — Pennebaker, a social psychologist, has done considerable work examining the healing potential of writing. You will find a paper describing his work here.

Sam Keen & Anne Valley Fox: Your Mythic Journey —  this book encourages the reader, through writing and reflection using question drawn from the work of Joseph Campbell, to uncover his story and explore its meaning.

I am never entirely happy with self-help books. In order to appeal to a large audience, in my view, they lose bite in favor of what is palatable and likely to engage masses of readers, rather the same way that the food from Taco Bell is suggestive of Mexican food but lacks the complexity and range of real Mexican food. So think of these books as a way to do personal myth, lite. Digging into one’s life, looking at Shadow as well as Persona, takes time. Plus all of us are at best reluctant to look into the corners and under the rocks where our darker or less acceptable aspects lurk. That said, these books offer a palatable way to begin to look at personal myth and may whet appetite for looking deeper. But beware of a tendency to encourage inflation, to push to a perfect resolution.I

What is the myth?

What is the myth?

It is often the case that at midlife and beyond  life calls us to look again at who we are, what we have done, what we believe in. This is prime time for discovering what is the story we have been living; as Jung put it — 

I asked myself, “What is the the myth you are living?” and found that I did not know. So…I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, an I regarded this as the task of tasks…I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me.”

Human beings are narrative makers. We remember ourselves and our lives in stories — stories we tell our friends, family, strangers, ourselves. When a new patient comes to me, I say “tell me about yourself” and await the story of this person’s life and how it has brought her to me. And if we work together for some time, that story will change so that the story she tells at the end will be recognizable as hers but different in some ways from the tale told at the beginning.

“The universe is made of stories – not atoms” —   Muriel Rukeyser

So, we swim in a sea of stories — our own and those of the ones around us. And we shape our lives around the story we tell ourself is ours, the story that we live. Think of a person you no doubt know whose life could be summed up in the song title, “I would do anything for love” — can you begin to see the story he or she is living? And how might that person be able to change the course of the story, write a new chapter if only she knew it was what she is living?

“The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it….” Jules Renard 

Exploring personal myth is one way to discover the story. 

In the last 20 years or so, a number of books have been written on the subject of personal myth. Of the lot of them, 2 stand out for me as better than the rest:

James Pennebaker: Writing to Heal — Pennebaker, a social psychologist, has done considerable work examining the healing potential of writing. 

Sam Keen & Anne Valley Fox: Your Mythic Journey —  this book encourages the reader, through writing and reflection using question drawn from the work of Joseph Campbell, to uncover our story and explore its meaning.

I am never entirely happy with self-help books. In order to appeal to a large audience, in my view, they lose bite in favor of what is palatable and likely to engage masses of readers, rather the same way that the food from Taco Bell is suggestive of Mexican food but lacks the complexity and range of real Mexican food. So think of these books as a way to do personal myth, lite. Digging into one’s life, looking at Shadow as well as Persona, takes time. Plus all of us are at best reluctant to look into the corners and under the rocks where our darker or less acceptable aspects lurk. That said, these books offer a palatable way to begin to look at personal myth and may whet appetite for looking deeper.