Approaching year six

I’ve been wondering about changing the name of my blog to Old Baby. I am certain that’s what most of us are: an “inner child” or “inner infant” lost and ungrown within a moving-on, aging life. The negative reason for a possible change is that I’ve always been nutz-ambivalent about the name “The Pessimistic Shrink.” Though a warm and uneasy glow happens in me at the thought of it and the work it represents, I also know the name is self-destructive and misleading. How many people would never give me a chance because of its miserableness? It is, however, honest: I’ve had to admit that I am pessimistic about the human psyche (though not about individual clients’ successes), and optimistic only as a consolation prize. Despite all the feel-good dreamy stuff (cognitive therapy and its minions) that spreads to every molecule in our time and culture, we are physically, holistically based in the poisoned roots of our childhood. That rot corrupts our life, so life becomes an escape from it. Our adultness is a lifeboat. The consolation prize is that you didn’t drown, and you can see beautiful things from a lifeboat.

Old Baby. From my view, it’s silly. It’s poignant, nostalgic, sad and loving. It’s even brave: Seeing older clients and talking with them about their unfinished child, and how their life may have started on the wrong track, is as powerful as it gets. Not everybody has the dignity of seriousness to go there. So “Old Baby” is a badge of honor, a Purple Heart.

And it’s silly and quaint, real values.

I’ve just now realized I’ve always unthinkingly assumed that psychology is as meaningful to most people as it is to me. Such a strange assumption, that disappears the moment I consider it, and resumes the moment I look away and at the world. The world has become the lifeboat. How can people not see that? But – why should they want to study and look for the sunken ship they escaped from? I’m the therapy proctologist. Arses are useful, valuable for humor and derision, but only a few people need to make them their home.

The answer has come to me: Readers will see the name Old Baby popping in and out randomly. There won’t be any explanation but here and here.* Feel invited to write to me.

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* https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-benign-court.html.