The market of available treatments for psychological problems is shrinking, which is why it is extremely important to know what exactly is on offer and what kind of specialist one wants to see. First of all, let’s talk about the differences between psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. These are completely different professions, and you will get radically different treatments from their representatives.

Psychiatrist – this is a person who doesn’t know how to do absolutely anything but choose a diagnostic label to attach to you and prescribe you medication. You will be hard-pressed to get a psychiatrist to remember your name, let alone retain the memory of what actually bothers you. A steady stream of patients flows into a psychiatrist’s office where they get their scrips and are sent away within minutes.

Psychotherapist – this is a person who doesn’t solve any problems either, but at least s/he will listen to you and not shut you up with zombifying medications. Psychotherapists have access to an enormous array of non-medicinal therapeutic practices that help make your problems manageable. The problems never go away because psychotherapy doesn’t touch their roots. Imagine having a lawn that keeps getting overgrown with weeds. You can use a lawn-mower on it but that will require weekly rounds of mowing since the seeds of the weeds will never go away. This is what psychotherapy is like. People end up visiting a therapist for years because life becomes tolerable as a result. However, without those visits, the problems quickly reappear in full bloom.

Many people choose this option, and I think it’s very respectable and has a right to exist. If one doesn’t feel like changing one’s life dramatically and simply wants to enjoy what s/he has better, that is perfectly fine.

 

Sessions with a therapist are usually pleasant. The support and acceptance one gets during them often make one feel euphoric after a session. One problem with psychotherapy is that you never know when you are visiting a quack who will not provide even this modest kind of support and will end up hurting you.

Psychoanalyst – this is a person who will also treat you non-medicinally and will never attach any diagnostic labels to you. Insanity, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia – none of those exist in a psychoanalyst’s world. For an analyst, you are neither sick nor abnormal. You are simply a human being who exists in a certain way and who is not better or worse than anybody else because of this. If you want to bug an analyst, just say something like, “I know this sounds completely crazy but. . .”

The goal of psychoanalysis is not to make life tolerable by mowing the lawn of your problems but to eradicate them altogether. This is why analysis will not last for many years (granted that both the patient and the analyst work and not pretend to work.) This is a finite process, at the end of which you are supposed to let go of your problems for good. For instance, if you have an alcohol addiction, as a result of psychoanalysis you will not need to spend the rest of your life going to meetings, confessing your alcoholism, and struggling “one day at a time” with the temptation. Because there will be no more temptation. Alcohol will simply stop being of any interest to you without any effort of will-power.

The downside of the process is that the sessions can be very painful and the time between them can be even worse. This is like removing facial hair with pincers one hair at a time as opposed to shaving. I believe that the degree of pain depends on how well one is prepared for the process and how aware one is of what the process will entail. (More on this later.)

One good thing about psychoanalysis is that an analyst (a real one, that is) always works with a supervisor. This is a person who is there to make absolutely sure that the analyst never projects his or her own problems onto you and doesn’t use you to advance any personal agenda.

Here is a piece of advice for students that is becoming very popular:

Find out who the best 5 teachers are in the university (I give them my suggestions but I also tell them to ask others around campus). Take whatever courses they teach, in whatever subjects. That’s the best the university has to offer. Every other course you take while you’re here is just gravy.

This sounds good on principle but the problem with this suggestion is that the evaluation of teaching is highly subjective. One person’s favorite teacher and profound inspiration for the rest of his or her life is another person’s boring, soul-crushing drudge. This is why teaching methodologies are not transferable and departments of education suck worse than pretty much anything on campus (unless you are offering a degree in Community Building).

To give an example, m sister and I enjoy a greater closeness than most twins, let alone regular siblings. We speak a language of our own and share everything. So when she decided to do the same Major as I had, I was thrilled. I recommended that she start with a course taught by the professor who had awakened my interest in literary criticism and whose classes were so intensely fascinating that I always felt traumatized whenever a class would end. I could listen to this prof speak about Spanish literature forever. For my sister, however, taking a course with this professor put an end to her interest in Hispanic studies.

“I cannot believe you want to waste your life on something so stooooopid!” she announced. “What a total waste of time!” (She was a teenager. Today, she would be a lot more forceful and assertive in expressing her opinion.) So she transferred to a program in Marketing.

Choosing professors who have people fighting to get into their courses is not a guarantee of teaching excellence either. At Yale we had this ultra-famous professor of English literature who conducted interviews with people interested in taking his courses and only chose the ones he happened to like. He was also known for making extremely obnoxious and offensive comments on students’ work. Given that he was notorious for being constantly accused of sexual harassment, I never considered going to his screening interviews. Besides, his most important contribution to literary criticism is the profound idea that “Shakespeare is the best writer in the world.” The reason why students slaughter each other to get into his classes is simply that he provides an opportunity to name drop. All of his books are featured prominently in Barnes & Noble bookstores, and it impresses people to know you’ve studied with him.

So my alternative advice to new students would be: don’t follow the herd. In what concerns choosing a professor as well as in everything else, figure out what makes you happy and do that. You are not in high school any more, so not standing out and being like everybody else has lost all value. The success of the rest of your life will depend on how soon you learn to discard everybody’s opinions on what should constitute happiness and begin to assert your right to be happy on your own terms.

In order to understand what objectification really feels like (as opposed to “Somebody stared at me on the bus, I feel totally objectified), try getting pregnant. I understand that I’ve been around for a while and after 37 years that gets old while a baby is new and exciting. I would, however, prefer for people to remember that there is a person placed around that baby.

“The skin on my legs cracks and starts gushing blood,” I tell my doctor.

“Oh, it’s OK,” he informs me brightly. “This is not harmful to the baby.”

And it’s good that it isn’t harmful to the baby, I celebrate this with all my heart. But it is harmful to another human being who currently acts as the baby receptacle – ME.

And then people wonder why I keep coming to work with this enormous belly. Because at work I’m a competent human being who is valued for her intellect and not an unwieldy, problematic body that needs to be shuffled around, medicated, and handled in a variety of weird ways.

“Oh, you don’t enjoy feeling like a thing?” an Argentinean friend mocks me. “Just wait until you breastfeed.”

Yes, there will be much whining in the next 19 days.

 

Somebody recently commented that students are getting smarter. Was that David Bellamy? I just discovered that this is true. I asked the students why Spanish was considered a Romance language and the majority knew that it was derived from Latin and Latin was the language of the Roman Empire.

When I last asked this question back in 2005, or something like that, the most popular response was, “Because it is such a romantic language!” and “Because Latino people are good at romance. When I traveled to Mexico last year, Mexicans flirted with all of the girls.”

So yes, it gets better.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans say President Obama is more to blame for the botched executive branch response to Hurricane Katrina while just 28 percent blamed George W. Bush. A plurality of 44 percent said they were unsure who was more responsible.

Well, nobody promised they will be smart. Or even capable of retaining basic short-term memories.

So my sister is traveling all the way from Montreal for one day to be present at my baby shower and to bring a suitcase of gifts. Then she will be traveling here once again in two weeks to be present for the birth and to bring 2 more suitcases of gifts.

I definitely know how to raise ’em well.

OK, it is simply wrong to make pregnant people laugh as hard as this passage made me laugh:

Probably every psychologist has had the experience of someone coming up to them and drunkenly suggesting that psychology is ‘all made up’. Psychiatrists get the same sort of crap but in the ‘you’re not a real doctor’ vein from other medics.

This makes people who work in psychological disciplines a bit insecure, so they’ll swear blind that ‘psychology is a science’.

I almost went into premature labor when I read this one. A psychiatrist who becomes insecure when some drunken idiot says something at a party. . . that is very, very rich. It is as bad as. . . no, I’ve got nothing. In terms of not being suited for your job, this probably wins the gold medal.