The Fear of Doing Nothing Quotes

“There is a dichotomy between the humanistic, narrative-based perception of psychology and the academic, empirically based approach to it. The Freuds vs. the white-coated people. It is not an abstract theoretical dispute at all, but rather a reality, which has affected me and probably all students of psychology over the years.”
― Valery Hazanov, The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist

“That's a good point. But, some flexibility, some openness... I mean, imagine Virginia Woolf coming for treatment. She's deeply depressed, suicidal. Let's say I'm a neo-Freudian psychotherapist, she even liked Freud so there, and I'm offering her smart neo-Freudian comments. But they don't stick, somehow. What I do doesn't work, she gets even more depressed, even more suicidal. She's about to end her life. So tell me: how arrogant would it be not to try anything that might work? How would I not say to myself: 'Okay, for some reason, the interpretations about her early sexual life and the fact that she's stuck in the oral stage - they don't seem to work, she keeps getting worse... Let's try something else.' Maybe she's more of an intersubjective type, a relationship type, a moment-to-moment person. Or maybe, I should do something like this: 'Virginia, I know that Tuesdays are really tough. God damn these Tuesday mornings... Why don't you go visit your sister, you like her daughter, don't you? Play with her a little... Read her a book, I don't know. Just don't be home by yourself.”
― Valery Hazanov, The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist

“Psychotherapy should never feel lukewarm.”
― Valery Hazanov, The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist

“The more someone is hurt and bullied in his life, the more he is not heard or seen, the more he is criticised and belittled - the less likely he is to experience human relations with a lens other than that of his own needs and the pain of those needs not being met.”
― Valery Hazanov, The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist