Maggie's Farm

The art of ‘being for another’ – following, listening to and making sense of another person’s world – has been practised for millennia. Humans have always discussed their lives, their values and their problems, trying to find meaning, solace and joy. Experts at this sort of discussion have been called wise women, shamans, priests – and now therapists. Then, starting with Sigmund Freud, came a series of attempts to create a science of psychotherapy out of it.

But there is very little science to it.

. . . Along the way, over years of practise, I lost faith that awareness was always curative, that resolving childhood trauma would liberate us all, that truly feeling the feelings would allow them to dissipate, in a complex feedback loop of theory and practice.

The effect of your family environment matters very little when it comes to your personality

. . . the tenets of psychotherapy did not reflect my clients’ lived experience, or even my own. Instead, we see what we expect to see, and we make sense of our past based on how we feel now.