Lori Gottlieb Is The Latest Avatar Of Psychotherapy
You'll never feel and think the same about psychotherapy after reading Gottlieb's book.
The world is one hell of a giant never-ending variety show and everyone is a voyeur-participant!
Our voyeuristic impulse is at once aggressive and subtle in its push for satisfaction, and it’s the one secret undepletable vital ingredient behind the ever-spinning gourmet of entertainment. We watch, we eavesdrop, and we peep; just as others watch and peep at us in turn. It’s an endless wheel of spectation, mostly directed outwards, but sometimes turned inwards upon our pathetic and egocentric selves. Thus, the world is more than a mere stage; it is a gargantuan showroom and everyone, alive or dying, is vying for space to display a good or hide a contraband. In this parade of desperate living commodities, in which narrative is the chief instrument, we play many parts. No doubt we play leading roles in our own ever-changing scripts while unfailingly featuring in cameos and as supporting casts in others’. And as interesting as each person’s self-ordained drama, we delight best of all in bearing front row witness to dramas unfolding in other people’s life, none more titillating as those most sought to be kept away from public view – the contrabands. We have come to learn that the more a narrative is made a public show of, the more likely it has been doctored, counterfeited, edited after a fashion, to suit the public’s current taste; that the best stories are those that spill out accidentally, unintended, raw and unedited. The ones that spill forth in all their inglorious incontinence. These are the ones that travel the farthest, strike the deepest, and resonate the longest; the ones whose vitality is organic and visceral. Having been glazed with the divine spark of reality, they are either spectacularly scandalous or spectacularly sensational or spectacularly inspirational. Whatever their character, they are spectacular. We see them and we are reminded of our metaphysical essence. Fear. Desire. Rage. Grace. Sacrifice. Courage. Brokenness. Craftiness. Innocence. Meanness. It is the eternal theme of life and its endless imitation through art.
Every once in a while, there comes an artist who gives us a work of art, not in imitation of life, but in replication of it. It brings life out of the tortured closet, free of all artifice of disguise, that all may bear witness to its eternal, if sometimes unpleasant, aspects. And by such transcendent arts, our voyeuristic appetite is allowed an occasional delight of satisfaction. It is the one instance we are allowed to slip out of sublimating mode and openly wallow in voyeuristic streak. Lori Gottlieb, the harbinger of this sublimating break, goes even a step further in her choice of metaphor for her subject matter, both in its practice and its art. She sees it as a sort of “pornography”. According to her, therapy and its metaphoric counterpart “both involve a kind of nudity. Both have the potential to thrill. And both have millions of users, most of whom keep their use private.” So also are the stories that emerge from these two spheres of activity: more often than not, they are told in disguise. Gottlieb broke the mould both in the spirit and method of narration: she went stark naked.
But to the extent that this is true, we are forced to ask: what exactly are we enjoying when we flip through the flying pages of Gottlieb’s work with so much mental and emotional arousal: a book or a show? A narration or a performance? Perhaps both?
I can’t remember the means by which I very recently and belatedly came to know about Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, but the reference must have been pretty striking enough for me to want to do a quick web search on who this Lori Gottlieb is. I have a vague sense that her last name had something to do with the fascination. I have a strong and impressive association with that name even though I don’t know exactly who or what the association is. Hence, my first impression was that he must be someone I already know about – my first shock was finding out the name belongs to a woman. The first thing I checked out was her Ted talk (I think this was the material the referral source mentioned). I wasn’t blown away by her presentation, certainly not in the same way that Esther Perel wows me each time I listened to her explicate. But there was something gingerly ineffable about Gottlieb’s presence on that stage, something palpably vulnerable and fragile that stood in sharp contrast to the solidity of the substance of her talk. I have always had a natural affinity for individuals who to my perception and judgment represent some ideal contradiction. However, not just in representation of a contradiction-ideal, but who have also managed to attain an awareness of this contradiction and are striving to perfect it. I have met a number of individuals who seem to me to possess some rudimentary ineffable quality in some idyllic proportion but who remain locked in ordinariness as a result of their lack of awareness of it. Something told me Gottlieb was even far more interesting than her Ted talk would suggest. So, I decided to check out her highly praised book. Contrary to my reading style, I ended up devouring and savouring the book without once snacking on another in-between. It was indeed apposite that the reviewer in New York Times, Alex Kuczynski, should describe it as “irresistibly candid and addicting”.
MYSTTS was more than a book, it was an experience. And for a profession notorious for secrecy, it was a profoundly satisfying experience, perhaps on account of its exhibitionistic fearlessness. I’m tempted to say Lori Gottlieb bared it all, but this would of course not be true. But if in comparison with what anyone in the psychotherapy business has shown before, one could rightly say that Gottlieb has gone further and perhaps deeper than most.
The book was practically wrung out of the fabric of bleeding vulnerability. The spirit and tone of the first-person narrative voice constantly reminded me of the only other psychotherapist I have read who dazzled me over and over again with how preternaturally comfortable he is revealing his vulnerable underbelly with his client. I have sometimes wondered whether Yalom’s penchant for hiding little may, in fact, be a compensatory response to assuage a metapsychotherapy guilty conscience. I doubt he can be matched in this radical openness, but Gottlieb came close, perhaps, even surpassed him, in this one remarkable telling of her own story. A story of how a therapist reluctantly landed in therapy and slowly clawed her way out of despair.
In some senses, it is also a multidimensional love story: between Gottlieb and her patients, between her and her son, between her and “Boyfriend”, and most especially, between her and Wendell, her enigmatic therapist. Wendell is what one would describe as a therapists’ therapist. Stanley Milgram was reputed to have remarked that “you can study human nature but you cannot escape it”. It was poignantly endearing to follow Gottlieb as she gingerly found and followed the path that would take her to Wendell’s office; watch her go through the gamut of experience that she had countlessly watched her own patients go through; and then exit with her as she declared a “pause” in the tortuous but beautiful dance (spoiler: they actually shared a moment of therapeutic dance together) between her and Wendell. She twice succumbed to the same insecurity that plagues every heart capable of loving; first when she asked Wendell if he liked her, and second when she asked him if he imagined her a good therapist. For me, these moments of extreme vulnerability, revealed in their starkness, was one of my highpoints in the book. I just couldn’t help falling in love with Gottlieb after such revelation.
This, then, must be the contradiction I sensed in her Ted talk: that she retains her innocence in the midst of brilliant self-awareness. It is often the case that self-awareness banishes innocence (or openness of spirit) and impedes spontaneity of action only to replace these with either artifice or vanity. This ego-reconfiguration is often inevitable because innocence is the opposite of self-awareness; the two are fundamentally incompatible. But, occasionally, we find some persons who defy this law and somehow manage to grow in self-awareness without completely shedding their childlike spirit; the spirit that does not shy away from crying when aching, from asking when in need, from sharing when in possession, and from being openly and genuinely amazed at little wonders of everyday life. They do this in spite of their equally adult capacity for micro deception, passive aggression, and self-responsibility. It is at once the most delicate and the most endearing contradiction to inhabit. It is the reason why very few can produce a work like what Gottlieb has given us, and it’s the reason why it will remain eternally relevant within and outside the field of psychotherapy.
