The Role of Kindness in Therapy

"This really is the full motivation for my having written the memoir. I want people to know what the process is like; not only what the process is like but what the feelings are that don't really make you think of psychoanalysis as a way of changing your life. We're just living and hoping that things will change without really taking account of the fact that we could be living better lives and in a better way. I began to think of the ways of the world and the wickedness in it. There's so many things that we do to keep us going - me and my aphrodisiacs, and I think other people doing other things just to divert them from the misery and unhappiness that they feel. I don't know how often that's looked at or discussed, so I hope the book does open that up a little bit."

Episode Description: We begin with Beverly's description of her early years of feeling lost and the consequent self-destructive patterns she replayed. Years of sensation-seeking led her to become "exhausted, limp, tarnished, and each time, more profoundly lost." She "landed on an analyst's couch in Little Venice, a section of London. I was paying for someone to recognize me. She did." Beverly shares her analytic journey with us and how vital her discovery of 'kindness' was, first from the outside and then from within. We discuss the early death of her father, her mother's depression and the devotion of her older brother. She closes with "Like life, psychoanalysis is a continuing process. It doesn't stop...issues crop up, new feelings arise...we better understand what those feelings are telling us, and how to make use of them in an environment we have been able to choose for ourselves. And so it goes…"

Our Guest: Beverly Kolsky, MSW has worked as a psychotherapist for more than forty years both in America and in England. She trained as a psychoanalyst with the New York Institute for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology also and received training in London where she worked under the auspices of the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute of Marital Studies. Her work has been published in two journals: Mind Consiliums and Voices: Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She had two psychoanalytic experiences in two countries with analysts of two different orientations. Her motivation for writing the book as a memoir was to let others in the community know the transformative and enduring power of psychoanalysis. She was in private practice in Englewood, N.J. and now lives, mostly retired, in the northern Adirondacks.

Recommended Readings:

Jung, C.G. 1963. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Collins and Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Kohut, H. 1984. How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kolsky, B. 2015 Mind Consiliums 15(10), (1-10). Empathy and Secrecy: Discovering Suicide as a Form of Addiction."

Kolsky, B. 2019 "The Ghost in You: Psychotherapy and Grief" (Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy.) Paperback The American Academy of Psychotherapists.

Kolsky, B. 2019 Voices: Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists. Vol 55 No 2 "To Be or Not To Be: A Patient's Search for the Lost Mother."

Kuchuck, S. 2021. London: Confer Books. The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Confer Books.

Malan, D, 1979. England. Butterworth & Co Ltd. Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics.

Taylor, K. 2002. U.S. Kevin Taylor M.D. Seduction of Suicide: Understanding and Recovering From Addiction to Suicide.