Schopenhauer's Porcupines Quotes

“This etymology puts me in mind of Winnicott’s notion of potential space–that intermediate area between the subjective and objective in which creativity and play occur. Psychotherapy is akin to play, according to Winnicott. Therapy takes place neither inside the mind of the patient nor inside that of the therapist, but in some middle area, in the potential space between them.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“the observation made by novelist Fay Weldon: “The greatest advantage of not having children must be that you can go on believing you are a nice person. Once you have children, you understand how wars start.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“Winnicott’s key word was “mothering,” Lacan’s was “desire.” For Lacan, desire is what simultaneously defines us as human subjects and what prevents us from ever being whole or complete. To desire something, after all, is to lack something. Whereas Winnicott’s tropes tended toward the organic–he spoke of “growth,” “development,” and “maturity”–Lacan’s imagery was more somber. (“The cipher of his mortal destiny” is characteristically Lacanian.) For Win-nicott, only in illness was the self divided, while for Lacan human subjectivity was necessarily divided, because of the existence of the unconscious. No matter how successful we become, no matter how much we are loved, we will always be vulnerable to irrational fears and capable of the most self-defeating acts. As Freud said, we can never be “master of our own house.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“Winnicott, I think, would have enjoyed the observation made by novelist Fay Weldon: “The greatest advantage of not having children must be that you can go on believing you are a nice person. Once you have children, you understand how wars start.” All relationships,”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“Freud wrote: “The evidence of psychoanalysis shows that almost every intimate emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time–marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children–contains a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which only escapes perception as a result of repression.” Freud believed that the one exception to this was the love of a mother for her son, which was “based on narcissism,” proving only that he was, among many other things, an Old World Patriarch.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“The key word associated with “neurotic” is “conflict”; with “borderline,” it is “deficit.” That is, while neurotics face difficulties in reconciling the demands of self with those of others, the “borderline” is in trouble at the very level of having or being a self. It goes without saying that people who carry this diagnosis have exceptional problems in adult relationships. That’s why some experts believe that psychotherapy works for neurotics only. The “borderline,” it is said, will be unable to trust the therapist and thus will hire and fire one helper after another. These patients won’t be able to accept the “new deal” of constancy and care offered by the therapist, because they are always responding to the internal rejecting parents.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“Borderline” is a term clinicians use to describe people who, psychologically, are somewhere between normal/neurotic and psychotic. Neurotics–that is, most of us–have our conflicts and symptoms, but we manage to function in work and love, for better and for worse, most of the time. Psychotics typically don’t function at all in work or love. To be psychotic is largely to relate only to parts of the self–or to the world as an extension of oneself. People labeled “borderline” function in the world, but their relationship to it and to others is severely impaired. They tend to be self-destructive and impulsive. Emily’s history of self-mutilation, and her decision months back to spend her last dollar on a one-way ticket to see a man who was doing his best to elude her, would be considered typically “borderline” behaviors. The cause of this condition is considered to be severe damage in the early parent-child relationship. The key word associated with “neurotic” is “conflict”; with “borderline,” it is “deficit.” That is, while neurotics face difficulties in reconciling the demands of self with those of others, the “borderline” is in trouble at the very level of having or being a self.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“The point is not to go nameless, to refuse the question “Who am I?”, but to keep the conversation about identity going. This is the work of psychotherapy: to learn both to assume an identity and to call it into question.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“keep the conversation about identity going. This is the work of psychotherapy: to learn both to assume”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“that forgoing recognition of status was a luxury of the recognized.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“For Lacan, desire is what simultaneously defines us as human subjects and what prevents us from ever being whole or complete. To desire something, after all, is to lack something.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“I have spoken before about the “yes” and the “no” alive in every person who seeks therapy. Listening to Pearl I heard the following: Yes, I would like to confide in you. No, that would displace my loyal family. Yes, I want to get help. No, that would prove I needed it. Yes, I want to change my life. No, I don’t. All the things I do and everything I am have taken me this far.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy

“There is no perfect solution to the problem of writing about therapy patients. But not to do so strikes me as the riskiest choice at a time in our culture when the power to define madness, malingering, and suicide potential is being handed over to insurance company functionaries.”
― Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy