Overview

As psychotherapists, our patients share with us the joys and sorrows, pain and pettiness, betrayal and cruelty, the lies and misery in their lives and relationships. We listen carefully and empathically. Between the lines of dialogue, however, therapists hover along a continuum of self-protection located between soul-sadness at one extreme, and a cool, isolated detachment at the other. Natural disasters, genocide, suicide bombings, hostage executions or beheadings, and sick and starving children leap to our attention in the media. Our patients often mention these events, and we try to listen empathically to their feelings and fantasies about them. We suppress or deny our own strong emotions so we can work with our patients. But our feelings can accumulate and lead to soul-sadness. Psychotherapists can use art, music, poetry, or creative writing to help contain and manage soul-sadness. This works by discharging, soothing, containing, or sublimating these realities in our daily work life. During 45-plus years of practicing teaching and writing about medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy, I have come to realize how draining psychotherapy is for the therapist. The use of writing as a means of catharsis and processing of stress has been valuable for me, so I wanted to share writing as a means of healing soul-sadness and preventing burn-out. Prevention soul-sadness and burnout in psychotherapists is very important for us and our patients. Peter Alan Olsson, MD, is a retired psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who has been writing for over twenty years. He trained at Baylor College of Medicine and Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in Houston. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Med School and an adjunct professor of clinical psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/PeterAlanOlsson Author's website: www.drpeterolsson.com

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9781681818214

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Reviews

Sanctuaries from Soul-Sadness is an exciting and wholly original work, a tapestry of pain, longing, and understanding wrought in the mind of none other than a psychotherapist. There is a prevalent misnomer that therapists, psychologists, and counselors are somehow immune to trauma; they are often seen as cold and detached, as objective brains that listen and analyze, but do not feel. Dr. Peter A. Olsson, however, dispels this myth, giving the reader a window into both the inner life and coping mechanisms of a member of this profession. But this opus is neither a self-help guide nor a prosaic autobiography. Rather, it is a pure expression of the self driven by empathy, wisdom, and honesty. The book is a collage of poetry and anecdotes, philosophy and screenplay, a maelstrom of creativity and reflection in every literary form, containing all the power and versatility of a complex mind in conversation with the world. Dr. Olsson approaches his ambitious project skillfully, crafting a piece of writing that is both deeply personal and yet fully universal; it taps into eternal truths gracefully, while allowing for certain questions to remain unanswered. Sanctuaries from Soul-Sadness is like nothing else you've ever read. I can't recommend it more highly. Charles Asher, PBK Reviews

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