Wilfred Bion,  Attention and Interpretation  (Jason Aronson).  I find Bion very difficult and often inscrutable, but I keep coming back to him.  I admire how honestly he attempts to apply his intellect to understanding the work of being together with a patient in psychotherapy.

William Lindsay Gresham,  Nightmare Alley  (New York Review Books Classics).  Not a book about therapy, and maybe the most misanthropic novel I've ever read.  A pulp classic that Milton Erickson said every therapist should read.  Perhaps because it shows the the dark side of human nature.  It's all about influence and manipulation, things Erickson knew a lot about, and sought to use beneficently.

I recently came across this list in Robert Karen's book from 1994, Becoming Attached.  He writes that "Therapy can do many things," and then launches into a sentence containing seven semicolons.  I'll break the sentence into bullet points:

Karen's list is quite comprehensive, but seems to me overly weighted toward insight and self-reflection.  His last item, for example, emphasizes how facing and freeing oneself from shame allows for greater "self-exploration."  This is true, but I think the real goal here is greater self-expression, more expansive experiences in relationship not just with oneself but with others and the world.

Psychotherapy can't be all things to all people, but it can be many things to many people.  In addition to each of the benefits in Karen's list, the profusion of his list (and more points could be added to it) suggests that a further benefit of therapy is the strength we can gain to realize and celebrate how manifold each of us and each of our relationships always are.

Today's New York Times has an eloquent opinion piece on pscyhoanalysis called "Freud's Radical Talking" by a Columbia graduate student, Benjamin Y. Fong: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/freuds-radical-talking/

Fong nicely describes how psychoanalysis provides an open field in which two (or more) sides of ourselves can be safely welcomed and heard. While psychotherapy is not psychoanalysis, that is where its roots are.  And even when psychotherapy is focused on problem-solving and coping-strategies, its value, Fong implies, runs deeper, providing open spaces for change and growth.  

Learning skills like how to overcome anxiety or manage anger are highly valuable.  And their greatest value may lie in helping us achieve a "free relation" (a term Fong takes from Martin Heidegger) not only to our anxiety or our anger but by extension to other parts of ourselves and our world.

Here are some of my favorite depictions of psychotherapy in movies and books and on TV:

Film:

"Spellbound," directed by Hitchcock.  A strangely wooden representation of classical American psychoanalysis, with with moments of great depth and beauty.  My favorite scene is the conversation on the train between Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.  

"What About Bob?"  Bill Murray can be hilarious just standing perfectly still, and he does much more than that in this film.  

Fiction:

"Harriet the Spy," by Louise Fitzhugh.  I was captivated by this book thirty-five years ago.  Harriet's notebooks made me wish to be a writer, and her sessions with the psychologist -- where she takes notes about him -- planted seeds of a life-long fascination with psychotherapy.

Television:

"A Charlie Brown Christmas." The scene with Lucy in her psychiatry booth is endlessly charming.  

Last Sunday's  New York Times (May 4, 2012) included an interesting article on couple's therapy, "Does Couple's Therapy Work?"  It began, in good journalistic fashion, by claiming that it is "an open secret" that "couples therapy stresses therapists out."  It made me wonder if writing about psychotherapy stresses journalists out.  For myself, I have have found couples therapy to be some of the most rewarding and invigorating work I do in my practice.

I appreciated the observation later in the article that couples who seek therapy early have a much better success rate.  The article refers to research that "the average couple is unhappy for six years before seeking couples counseling" -- at which point the patterns of discord can be firmly embedded and difficult to address.  But I think the opposite can also be true: after such a length of time, the patterns can be clearly visible and ripe for change.