Psychotherapy

Pleasure in solitude — the enjoyment of one’s own company — is one of the compensations for the existential loneliness of the human condition.

A discussion of envy and how the envious person wishes to spoil or destroy the object of envy. This article includes a clinical example from one psychotherapy case, as well as a personal example of envious behavior from the author.

Bipolar and borderline clients who feel hopeless about their capacity for meaningful change often idealize their therapists and unconsciously try to merge with them; this fantasy of merger represents an escape from the damaged self into an alternative ideal self embodied by the therapist, a sort of personal growth by annexation.

A discussion of the subtle role of envy in certain forms of self-sabotage, with clinical material to illustrate it.

Growth and psychological transformation stir up existential anxieties about what it means to be alone with personal responsibility; they also make us aware of the passage of time and the inevitability of death.