simcha's postings about love, connection, parenting & personal growth
Some years back, I visited the Freud Museum in London, once the final home of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and his daughter Anna Freud, a pioneering child psychoanalyst. (The Freud family had come to England as refugees, following the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938.)
On Freud’s desk in his study stood a metal figure of a porcupine with quills, a figure he apparently kept there all the time. Why a porcupine?
The clinical abilities of psychologist and sex therapist David Schnarch attract clients and students from across the globe. He has written several landmark books on intimacy, sexuality, and relationships. Unlike other master therapists who speak of long-term relationship in terms of rebuilding “attachment,” Schnarch speaks of differentiation.
Kristin Armstrong, a freelance writer and contributing editor for Runner’s World magazine, and the ex-wife of cyclist Lance Armstrong, writes about “getting back the real me … one heartbreaking and publicly failed marriage later” (Kristin Armstrong on Marriage, Glamour Magazine, May 1, 2006).
If I were to do things over again, I wouldn’t have thrown myself so irrevocably into my new life. I would have guarded the things that made me feel like me — the places, the friends — and above all I would have spoken up about my needs. Instead, I will leave you with a lesson about how a woman can hold on to the bright, hard flame of who she is.