The Shrink's Couch

So this person I know really well asked me more or less, something along the lines of THE QUESTION: 'what is the purpose of life/why are there more difficult things than easy things that we encounter here...'

Well, it was something along those lines, anyway.

'You know,' I told her, 'if you consider the consultation suites of psychoanalysts and traditional psychotherapists, you have this 'shrink's couch' thing going on, this comfortable, quiet, dim-lit, warm, room, with a chaise that you can lie back on where you can close eyes to think; or not, as the case may be.'

And I of course expanded on the simple image description, and endeavored to weave my own perspective into it - which goes like this: even the learned, deep thinking, and very experienced people like Freud and Jung and Adler and Rank and Reich and Ritter and whoever else, all seemed perfectly sure that for most people the world was a psychologically, or a spiritually, inhospitable place, and that they might as well not add to the problem by assuming urgency, or anything in fact, that was liable to or inclined to, increase anxiety.

Hence the creation of this comfortable and intended-to-be relaxing space in which to set out from, on the journey to self-discovery or understanding of the world.

Human personality is about the clothes -
the clothes and the person are one.

Psychotherapists proceed from the position of assuming that everyone who comes to them is 'suffering.' And generally the suffering has a root cause in a sense of meaninglessness.

Well, that's what I hear a lot of psychotherapists say.

But I think far and away the most important thing is the very first proposition - namely, that the world is or can be, a psychologically inhospitable place. We don't need to employ the word 'spiritual' too much for our purposes here. It isn't necessary right now - we can get away with using the entirely secular 'psychological.'

...There is a road though, and a doorway, to the solution to everything.

Manu Zain - 'Without You'