Blog
My liberal white privilege: How Dylann Roof helped me understand why I’m so furious with Rachel Dolezal
It took me a while to figure out just why Rachel Dolezal made me so angry. It wasn’t that I didn’t see the reasons why she should make me angry and certainly not that I didn’t think I ought to be angry. But, none of the specifics felt right as a reason she engendered the particular response in me that she did.To be honest, it took Dylann Roof.. I was a wreck last Thursday morning when I read the…
Jun 23, 2015
Internalizing External Messages: The Impact on "Problem Children"
Editors Note: We are so pleased to share, for the first time since the launch of our website, the writing of a therapist in our NYC practice who isn't the founder and director, Matt Lundquist. Heather Mayone Kiely is a psychotherapist and Art Therapist who joined the practice in 2012 when we expanded to a larger therapy office. She is a creative and thoughtful observer of human beings and writes…
Jun 19, 2015
"I'll betcha": Reclaiming "Crazy" in NYC Therapy
Is it crazy for a therapist to use the word crazy?. I need to begin with a qualifier: As an established therapist in NYC, some of you may be a bit thrown off by my casual use of the word crazy. I get it. It may not fit your expectation of a therapist. If you've stumbled upon here as someone seeking therapy in NYC or as a therapist meandering on the internet, you may hear this not as the call to…
Apr 09, 2015
Family therapy: For New Yorkers an unconsidered psychotherapy option
New York family therapists love family therapy. Therapists who offer family counseling love family counseling. And often, those who aren't family therapists find the idea of family counseling terrifying. Ironically this is often for the same reasons. Families are tough. If you've spent time in one, it's like that you get that very well.New York's family identity: A different conception of family…
Mar 23, 2015
More on drug and alcohol counseling and criticism of AA
The Atlantic takes a turn at criticizing the approach drug and alcohol counseling of Alcoholics Anonymous. Last week I wrote about a Salon.com piece on drug and alcohol counseling and the ineffectiveness of AA (the article cited a 5-10% effectiveness rate for AA drug and alcohol counseling). This week the Atlantic weighs in with its own critique of the drug and alcohol counseling…
Mar 18, 2015
Sexual abuse and rape: Still in denial
All therapists work with sexual abuse (though some are in denial). I work with survivors of sexual abuse in therapy in my NYC practice. A short while ago a request for came across my inbox via a networking group for NYC therapists I subscribe to (often reluctantly). "Looking for psychotherapist in Manhattan specializing in sexual abuse to see woman in early 20's," and a comment "I don't work…
Mar 17, 2015
Drug and alcohol counseling: Salon on the success of AA
Salon.com lands a harsh critique of Alcoholics Anonymous as the prevailing model of drug and alcohol counseling, referring to the 80-year old, peer-led program as a "monopoly" that has "made it impossible to have real debate about addiction." The article, which is worth a read, is long on empirics: Salon points out that "Peer-reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between 5 and 10…
Mar 11, 2015
Less tolerance for tolerance in therapy
Tolerance is a word that comes up most often in two related forms of usage. In psychology and psychotherapy, following the term's use in medicine (pain tolerance, drug tolerance), tolerance is constructed as a skill in need of development, as in "increasing one's frustration tolerance" or "tolerating disappointment." In the context of multiculturalism, as in "New York city needs make further…
Feb 19, 2015
What's the therapy for emotional allergies?
What's the therapy for emotional allergies?. I'm not thrilled to add even more medical language to the lexicon of diagnoses flooding psychotherapy, but I've come to find a useful analog in a medical experience many of us are familiar with that lends a new understanding to experiences that present themselves in therapy like anxiety and depression.When I moved to NYC I had a fantasy that living in…
Feb 17, 2015
What are you? (Therapy patient? Client?)
If you're like most people I talk to about this topic, you couldn't care less about how we refer to the folks we work with in our NYC therapy office. In fact, the odds are slim that you'd ever be referred to by anything but your first name by your therapist. And so it may surprise you that this is a matter of great controversy and that it is one of great significance to anyone who engages in…
Jan 20, 2015
The New York Times on Positive thinking: A therapist's response
"Think positive" is one of those adages that comes in and out of favor in the therapy room and beyond on a roughly 20-year cycle. We're coming down from the zenith of another wave on that curve, it seems, and the New York Times is ready, as always, to chronicle the ebb.A focus on "thinking" as the point of intervention for psychotherapy is as old as psychology itself, and takes the form of…
Oct 30, 2014
The end of psychology? So says the Onion (Or: Because science...)
Like the best satire, this piece from the Onion lends itself to at least a few interpretations.The mock headline reads, "Psychology Comes To Halt As Weary Researchers Say The Mind Cannot Possibly Study Itself." Perhaps it's a critique of a critique of Cartesian dualism (and therefore a defense of psychology) or perhaps the Onion really is calling out the most fundamental supposition of research…
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