Why Therapy Feels Worse Before It Gets Better: The Psychological Desert
This essay forms the third part of a four-part series on psychological thresholds: The Desert Phase of Psychological Change. In the previous essay, I explored why psychological thresholds are so difficult to cross. Here I turn to what can happen when we finally do. The first experience of real psychological change is rarely relief. It […]
Looking For an English-Speaking Therapist in Berlin? What Actually Matters
Many of the people who contact me are unsure what they are looking for as they begin searching for an English-speaking therapist in Berlin. The process can feel surprisingly opaque. I hope to offer some orientation here, to make it more navigable. Berlin offers no shortage of therapists who work in English. A brief search […]
When Certain Interpretations Become Unspeakable
I recently attended a webinar on case formulation in therapy led by a senior clinician whose work I respect. What stayed with me was not just the psychodynamics of the case, but a parallel process in the group that seemed to reflect a broader cultural difficulty. What happens to clinical thinking when certain observations become […]
Staying With What Is: Why Psychological Thresholds Are Difficult to Cross
This is the second part of a three-part series inspired by a shared feeling that we are standing on a threshold. In my January essay, Crossing the Threshold, I explored the psychological thresholds and mythic dimensions of this moment. Here, I want to look more closely at why thresholds are so difficult to cross, and […]
Psychotherapy is Not Neutral Work
”No-one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.” Sigmund Freud On the 19th January, 2026 Rebecca White, a 44 year old therapist was murdered in her office in Orange County, Florida. […]
Therapy at the Threshold: Depth Psychotherapy in the Age of AI, Avoidance, and Lost Meaning
The passage from one cycle to another can only take place in darkness–René Guénon As I write this, half of my city sits in darkness, beginning the new year as collateral in a political attack directed at the wealthy. It is January, and the prevailing mood is one of vulnerability. Since Covid in particular, each […]
Is Therapy Due a Correction? The Boom, the Drift, and the Coming Reset in Therapy Culture
Every industry that grows too fast forgets what made it valuable. Therapy is no exception. A recent article in The Cut exposed and criticised Internal Family Systems, or IFS, a therapeutic approach that has gone from niche to mainstream in record time. I’d always thought of it as harmless, even interesting, but reading those accounts […]
The Return of the Sacred: Psychedelic Therapy and the Longing for Depth
This essay is the final piece in a three-part series exploring how therapy both reflects and resists our cultural moment. In Part One, “Are We All Becoming Avoidantly Attached?”, I looked at our collective retreat from emotional discomfort. In Part Two, “The Validation Trap,” I examined how therapy itself can collude with that avoidance, offering […]
The Validation Trap: How Affirmation Therapy Threatens Depth
This essay is the second in a three-part series exploring how therapy both reflects and resists our cultural moment. In part one, “Are We All Becoming Avoidantly Attached?”, I looked at our growing tendency to flee emotional discomfort. Here, I turn to the rise of what I call “affirmation therapy”, a comfort-first approach that prizes […]
Are We All Becoming Avoidantly Attached? Emotional Withdrawal in the Digital Age
Attachment Theory and the Algorithmic Age Attachment theory, first developed by British psychoanalyst John Bowlby, has long been a cornerstone of psychotherapeutic thinking. It helps us understand how early relational experiences shape the ways we seek connection, handle conflict, and navigate intimacy. But in recent years, attachment language, including that of avoidant attachment, has gone […]