Yet another beginning

The Pessimistic Shrink finds a pretty empty head for the new year.  The clients keep coming – all interesting issues – but nothing compels me to write about it.  Part of this is probably that I’m “on hold”: the long wait to see if I’ll gain licensure in another state.  Another factor may be what my age is doing to my ideation: Though each client is just his- or herself and merits and receives unique, actionable focus, after I leave the session I mostly see universal themes of reality, themes of human nature.  This is part of that; plus, old age makes me feel on the cosmic scale and unable to care about lots of little behaviors or the most popular hashtags (I don’t know how to use a hashtag).  Yet another factor is that I believe there are only a few basic psychological principles – distilling to ‘All problems are pain-based’ – and so there is less and less to write about after, and during, the previous ninety-eight posts.  Penultimately, there is my underlying dysthymia which cuts down on meaning, at all levels of depth, in a quiet though vast way.  And finally the fact that my readership has remained so sparse that I now only write when I want to say something to myself.

Now, it’s possible that my reliable mini-fin de siècle languor with its fey sense (defined as “otherworldly air”), always overcoming me at the very end of a year, will dissipate soon and I’ll have new energy for 2015.  I do picture an interesting man who presents with ninety-five percent sociopathy, yet who has a warm and rewarding therapeutic relationship with me.  That would be interesting to write about: There is a hurt, even good heart deep beneath the cold, the horror-thinking.  And the young woman – very beautiful and knowing it – who so sensitively sees every nuance in parents’ faces and tone as rejection, smothering, condescension.  Is she right?

We’ll see.