Doctor carlos rivera long branch nj

I apologize that this is going to be long, but I need help with my marriage. My husband and I are in our 30's and are both family physicians. As a physician, mental health treatment is severely limited as we have to disclose depression, anxiety, etc. when applying for state licenses, board certification, etc. I constantly live in silent suffering, putting on a face for my patients and colleagues. I have crossed state lines and paid in cash to seek therapy but it hasn't been very helpful. I appreciate whoever takes the time to read this and help with advice.
My husband and I come from different backgrounds. I grew up poor in Appalachia, lived in a single-wide mobile home and ate things like ketchup packets, mashed potato flakes or coffee creamer. I had never went to the doctor and the first time I went to the dentist I was 17. My childhood was spent playing in the woods and babysitting my little brother who is 10 years younger than me. My mom worked the night shift and my dad worked the day shift. My dad was very religious, paranoid, verbally / physically abusive to me and my mom. One time I couldn't find the phone for him to call his cousin and he got mad, gathered up all my toys and burned them in the back yard. I began drawing my own paper dolls and when he found them, he ripped them up saying it was "idol worship." He would call me "child" instead of my name, for example, "hey child, make me a tuna sandwich." He always got the biggest portions of food. When I was 8 years old he told me not to call him "daddy" anymore to hurt my mom.
My mom was MIA with severe depression, just sleeping on her days off. Other things he did was beat my sibling so bad he couldn't go to school and I took video of it, showing the librarian who then called CPS. My dad was arrested, but since he was related to the judge, the case was dismissed. The years went by getting called names, hair pulling, doing all cooking and all the cleaning; he never lifted a finger. I was 16 years old when my mom found out my dad was cheating on her with a coworker and she needed the GeoTracker to go to work that night; he was going to take it to see his girlfriend, and he started beating my mom up. I jumped out the window to help my mom and my dad grabbed my hair, screaming, "I HATE YOU!!!!!!!" Over and over and over, his voice echoing throughout the holler.
Since I was really young I have experienced extreme empathy, to the point of being a people pleaser. I always wanted to help people and animals. I never threw trash on the ground, I helped injured animals. When I was 10 years old, I scooped up tadpoles from puddles so they wouldn't die when the puddle dried up and put them in an old broken fish aquarium, releasing them back to wild when they would grow legs. To this day, frogs have a special place in my heart.
I was bullied in high school because I brought paper dolls to my first day of freshman year, I was the youngest in my high school at 13 years old. My clothes smelled like moth balls. During a fake fire drill, students had to go on the football field and there an an instance where a male student urinated on me and threw a keychain at me that he lit on fire. I was bullied because I always wore coats, even in 80 degree weather. I was ashamed at how thin I looked, I have always looked way younger than what I really am. I attempted suicide twice when I was a teenager.
I made good grades, was salutatorian of my class. I was able to get a full paid scholarship to a nearby college but I rejected it and took out a massive amount of student loans to attend University 4 hours away. I wanted to branch out in the world and I wanted to become a physician. I wanted to see what was beyond the mountains. I truly wanted to help people as it brought me happiness.
When I was 17, I started my freshman year of college. I did not know how to drive, did not have a car, my speech / grammar was very bad (I had to learn how to speak proper English), I basically lacked common sense. I walked everywhere - to campus, to the bank, to the grocery store. I had severe social phobia and anxiety. My last class to complete my bachelor of science degree was oral communications (night class as I hate public speaking). Sometimes a grocery store trip took 2 hours. During this time, to make extra money, I began selling art on eBay, making enough money to cover the monthly rent an bills. I drew portraits and also anime fanart.
Fast forward through med school, my social phobia began to improve as I got more exposure talking to people. It was my first day of clinical rotation on internal medicine and no one would show me how to write a progress note except one student. I was so shocked that someone could be this nice, to take time out of their schedule to help me. I continued to follow him like a lost puppy and we became friends. I had never dated anyone before and after 6 months of being friends he asked me to go to Starbucks. We eventually got engaged, then married, and moved to separate states to do our residencies.
Some background information about my husband - he was born in India and moved to Canada as a child. His dad was in the navy and his mom was a teacher. They had servants growing up who did all the cleaning, cooking, etc. He was given pretty much anything he asked for, which looking back, explains a lot of his behavior.
After completing residency, we finally moved to start our family practice careers. When we started living together as a married couple, things started to change. He expected me to wait on him - cook, clean, head massage, fold his clothes - basically everything his mother did for him. And if I did not do something right or not do it right away, he would get upset and run and tell his mother everything. He talked to her about our arguments all of the time.
Overtime, he began calling me names like b****, neurotic, crazy, delusional, childish, etc. Several months ago I was washing a large plastic bin in the sink and he was concerned I would knock a glass onto the floor and it would break. He started screaming at me, took the bin from me, threw it in the hall and then slapped me in the back of the head. Over the years, he would belittle me, make fun of where I grew up, call me naïve if I did not know how something worked. A few months ago he wanted chicken and so I made some in the Air Fryer, but it wasn't the same as his mom's chicken, and he yelled at me, saying I ruined the chicken and told his mom. I offered to make the chicken again, but he refused to eat it if I did, and DoorDashed Chinese food. He also calls me weird and says no one else would put up with me - meaning my collection of Sailor Moon dolls and Animal Crossing merchandise is a turn off. (BTW, when I was in medical school, I played a lot of Animal Crossing back in those days, they were so positive!)
He will not let me sleep in the same bed, saying I disturb his sleep. He sleeps in the Master Bedroom and I either sleep in the living room on the couch or in the attic. There was an instant where he had gone to sleep and I needed a new toothbrush, so I snuck in the Master Bedroom, crawling with my cellphone light on, but he saw it, got extremely angry and went to knock everything over in my closet, screaming obscenities. I could not sleep that night and had to go into the clinic in the morning to see patients, pretending nothing was wrong. My eyes were extremely swollen from crying and the staff had asked if I was feeling ok, thinking I was getting COVID. I dreaded coming home, often times hoping I would get in a car accident and die.
Last year I was diagnosed with autoimmune diseases narcolepsy and ankylosing spondylitis after contracting COVID from a patient who lied about having it during the COVID pre-screen questionnaire. I had to establish with neurologist and rheumatologist for treatment, and now take medications. Due to my declining health, I had to leave my clinic job as a family physician and now I work from home via Telehealth.
Something happened last night that made me realize my husband does not love me, and honestly, I don't believe anyone in this world loves me. I don't think I love myself. I wanted to sleep in the same bed with my husband and he got upset, saying I woke him up with having restless legs. He threw the blanket off of me, tore off the heated eye mask I was wearing and turned on the tv to 80 points so that I would leave the room. He then passed gas extremely loud and then LAUGHED as I started to cry. I left, going up to the attic to sleep.
When I try to talk to my husband about how I feel, he always turns it around on me, saying I have a big ego, I can't take criticism and I'm too sensitive. When I request I would like him to be more positive, he says things like, "this is the real world, people aren't nice." I think he became a physician because he was expected to, not because he wanted to. He starts to say things like, "I do all kinds of things for you! I pay the bills, take the dog places, follow up on important tasks that you forget!"
I apologize for the long essay, this is the first time I have told my story, to strangers on the internet. I often think what is my purpose in life? I miss my patients from the clinic, I miss that human bond. Now I feel lonely, hopeless and don't know where to go from here. What can I do to improve my life and my self esteem without the medical board knowing?

Crosspost from NWSL 2023 Kickoff Countdown
Welcome to the 2023 Kickoff Countdown for GOTHAM FC (Written by a NY native & Gotham fan, I think we all know how it is so pls don't come for me).


THE BASICS:
Head Coach: Juan Carlos Amorós
Performance Coach: Philip Congleton
Goalkeeper Coach: Brody Sams
GM & Heaad of Soccer Ops: Yael Averbuch
Assistant GM: Nathán Goldberg Crenier
Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Oscar Vazquez
Physical Therapist: Erin Morton
Captain: McCall Zerboni (2022)
Stadium: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJ
Ownership: Founding Owners- Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, Steven Temares; Operating Owners- Kristin Bernert, Karen Bryant, Bobby Cho, Ed Nalbandian; Strategic Investors- Sue Bird, Kevin Durant, Pete Guelli, Rich Kleiman, Carli Lloyd, Eli Manning
Global Creative Advisor: Ashlyn Harris
Supporters Groups: Cloud9
Subreddit: GothamFC
Social Media: @GothamFC


THE SCHEDULE:
Opener: 9 pm EST Sunday, March 26th vs Angel City AWAY (BMO stadium, CA)
Home Opener: 7:30 pm EST Saturday, April 1st (no it’s not a prank), vs. OL Reign (Red Bull Arena, NJ)
First Challenge Cup Match: 7:30 pm EST Wednesday, April 19th vs Washington Spirit @ HOME (Red Bull Arena, NJ)



THE ROSTER:
Goalkeepers (3): Michelle Betos, Abby Smith (TRADE, THORNS), Mandy Haught
Defenders (10): Bruninha (INTL, BRZ), Imani Dorsey, Kristen Edmonds(TRADE,KCC), Sabrina Flores, Mandy Freeman, Ellie Jean, Ali Krieger, Nealy Martin, Kelley O'Hara (TRADE, WAS), Taylor Smith
Midfielders (7): Nahomi Kawasumi (INTL, JAP), Allie Long, Kristie Mewis, Victoria Pickett, Yazmeen Ryan (TRADE, THORNS), Delanie Sheehan, McCall Zerboni
Forwards (5): Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir (INTL, ICELAND), Jenna Nighswonger (DRAFT), Ifeoma Onumonu, Midge Purce, Lynn Williams (TRADE, KCC)
More to come (1): Sinead Farrelly (TBD-Contract Pending, historically midfield); scored in a preseason match for Gotham as a non-roster invitee on 2/25/23
On loan (1): Hensley Hancuff (GK), is on loan with Brisbane Roar FC until April 30th.
Injured (1): Taryn Torres (Midfield)


THE HISTORY:
What we want to forget:
All of 2022.
Everything after 2013? Gotham hasn’t reached the semifinals since their first season in the NWSL (2013). They reached the quarter-finals in 2021, but didn’t qualify any other year.
A bunch of other stuff that is available on the Wikipedia (and includes subjects of the Yates report and poor player conditions). And no, the main ownership has not changed since then (2016-2019), although Tammy Murphy allegedly took a more active role in club ownership and spearheaded improvements.
What we want to remember:
…
Gotham FC was known as Sky Blue FC before April 2021. Gotham (or Sky Blue) was founded in 2006 as a USL W-League team and has been part of the NWSL since it started in 2012. Their league record is 55-50-77. If they win every match this season, they can turn their win to loss ratio positive...


THE HOPE PART I:
THE PLAYER HIGHLIGHTS:
Kelley O’Hara, returning this year, played for the team in its inaugural NWSL season (2013) through 2017. Perhaps O’Hara’s presence at Gotham is a symbol of hope? Or at least of reasonable working conditions?
Sam Kerr holds the club record for most goals in a single season, for 17 goals in 2017. She is also the all time leading goal scored for Gotham with 28 goals.
Last season’s top scorers were Zerboni, Monaghan, and Purce – each with 3 goals. Mewis, Onumonu, and T. Smith scored 2 each, and Kawasumi scored 1, for a total of 16 goals over 22 regular season matches. Gotham allowed 44 goals.
Lynn Williams was tied for top NWSL scorer (11 goals) in the 2016 season when she was the NWSL MVP. We would love to see her do it again. Lynn is also a 3x NWSL Champion.
Kelley O’Hara is a 2021 NWSL Champion and 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion.
Allie Long is a 2x NWSL Champion and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Ali Krieger is a 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Nahomi Kawasumi is a 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
McCall Zerboni is a 3x NWSL Champion
Taylor Smith is a 2016 NWSL Champion
Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir is a 2022 Toppserien Champion. She scored 4 goals in 2022.
Jenna Nighswonger has a string of accolades, but it is her rookie year in the NWSL. She has played on the US Youth national team, and the U-23 team.
Gotham’s oldest player is Ali Krieger (38), and youngest player is Bruninha (20).

­­­­­­­___________________
THE HOPE PART II:
The Juan Carlos Amorós Effect?
When Amorós took over the Dash exactly halfway through the season (11 games down, 11 to go), their regular season record went from 4-3-4 to 6-3-2 and their average possession went from 44.5 percent to 50.5 percent. Goals and expected goals per game increased slightly. Can he do the same for Gotham?
THE PREDICTIONS:
Formation: 4-3-3
- Gotham ran mostly a 4-3-2-1 last season, but they started to shake things up throughout the second half of the season. When Amorós took over the Dash, he shifted them to a 4-3-3 and never looked back. I expect he’ll start with the same for Gotham.
Predicted Opener Starting 11:
I bet we see the same starting 11 as the preseason scrimmage on 3/11/23 (7-0 win over University of Pittsburgh):
GK: Abby Smith
Defense: Bruninha, Edmonds, Ellie Jean, Krieger
Midfield: Zerboni, Long, Ryan
Forwards: Onumonu, Purce, Williams
Subs: at least Nighswonger and Pickett, Farrelly if she’s signed, Mewis
Throughout the season, expect those subs + O’Hara to get the start too.


TLDR
THE SUMMARY:
If you want to root for an underdog this year, Gotham’s your team. They finished dead last in 2022, and they’ve made some big moves during the offseason, while retaining their biggest veterans and stars. If the squad can gel, Juan Carlos Amorós can take this team up. For Gotham, some renewed hope this season could go a long way. We’d love to see them win it all, but I think Gotham fans will be over the moon to see them make the playoffs. The competition is tough, is 2023 Gotham tougher?

Welcome to the 2023 NWSL Kickoff Countdown for reigning champions GOTHAM FC (written by a New York native & Gotham fan <3)

THE BASICS:
Head Coach: Juan Carlos Amorós
Performance Coach: Philip Congleton
Goalkeeper Coach: Brody Sams
GM & Heaad of Soccer Ops: Yael Averbuch
Assistant GM: Nathán Goldberg Crenier
Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Oscar Vazquez
Physical Therapist: Erin Morton
Captain: McCall Zerboni (2022)
Stadium: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJ
Ownership: Founding Owners- Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, Steven Temares; Operating Owners- Kristin Bernert, Karen Bryant, Bobby Cho, Ed Nalbandian; Strategic Investors- Sue Bird, Kevin Durant, Pete Guelli, Rich Kleiman, Carli Lloyd, Eli Manning
Global Creative Advisor: Ashlyn Harris
Supporters Groups: Cloud9
Subreddit: GothamFC
Social Media: @GothamFC


THE SCHEDULE:
Opener: 9 pm EST Sunday, March 26th vs Angel City AWAY (BMO stadium, CA)
Home Opener: 7:30 pm EST Saturday, April 1st (no it’s not a prank), vs. OL Reign (Red Bull Arena, NJ)
First Challenge Cup Match: 7:30 pm EST Wednesday, April 19th vs Washington Spirit @ HOME (Red Bull Arena, NJ)



THE ROSTER:
Goalkeepers (3): Michelle Betos, Abby Smith (TRADE, THORNS), Mandy Haught
Defenders (10): Bruninha (INTL, BRZ), Imani Dorsey, Kristen Edmonds(TRADE,KCC), Sabrina Flores, Mandy Freeman, Ellie Jean, Ali Krieger, Nealy Martin, Kelley O'Hara (TRADE, WAS), Taylor Smith
Midfielders (7): Nahomi Kawasumi (INTL, JAP), Allie Long, Kristie Mewis, Victoria Pickett, Yazmeen Ryan (TRADE, THORNS), Delanie Sheehan, McCall Zerboni
Forwards (5): Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir (INTL, ICELAND), Jenna Nighswonger (DRAFT), Ifeoma Onumonu, Midge Purce, Lynn Williams (TRADE, KCC)
More to come (1): Sinead Farrelly (TBD-Contract Pending, historically midfield); scored in a preseason match for Gotham as a non-roster invitee on 2/25/23
On loan (1): Hensley Hancuff (GK), is on loan with Brisbane Roar FC until April 30th.
Injured (1): Taryn Torres (Midfield)


THE HISTORY:
What we want to forget:
All of 2022.
Everything after 2013? Gotham hasn’t reached the semifinals since their first season in the NWSL (2013). They reached the quarter-finals in 2021, but didn’t qualify any other year.
A bunch of other stuff that is available on the Wikipedia (and includes subjects of the Yates report and poor player conditions). And no, the main ownership has not changed since then (2016-2019), although Tammy Murphy allegedly took a more active role in club ownership and spearheaded improvements.
What we want to remember:
…
Gotham FC was known as Sky Blue FC before April 2021. Gotham (or Sky Blue) was founded in 2006 as a USL W-League team and has been part of the NWSL since it started in 2012. Their league record is 55-50-77. If they win every match this season, they can turn their win to loss ratio positive...


THE HOPE PART I:
THE PLAYER HIGHLIGHTS:
Kelley O’Hara, returning this year, played for the team in its inaugural NWSL season (2013) through 2017. Perhaps O’Hara’s presence at Gotham is a symbol of hope? Or at least of reasonable working conditions?
Sam Kerr holds the club record for most goals in a single season, for 17 goals in 2017. She is also the all time leading goal scored for Gotham with 28 goals.
Last season’s top scorers were Zerboni, Monaghan, and Purce – each with 3 goals. Mewis, Onumonu, and T. Smith scored 2 each, and Kawasumi scored 1, for a total of 16 goals over 22 regular season matches. Gotham allowed 44 goals.
Lynn Williams was tied for top NWSL scorer (11 goals) in the 2016 season when she was the NWSL MVP. We would love to see her do it again. Lynn is also a 3x NWSL Champion.
Kelley O’Hara is a 2021 NWSL Champion and 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion.
Allie Long is a 2x NWSL Champion and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Ali Krieger is a 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Nahomi Kawasumi is a 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
McCall Zerboni is a 3x NWSL Champion
Taylor Smith is a 2016 NWSL Champion
Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir is a 2022 Toppserien Champion. She scored 4 goals in 2022.
Jenna Nighswonger has a string of accolades, but it is her rookie year in the NWSL. She has played on the US Youth national team, and the U-23 team.
Gotham’s oldest player is Ali Krieger (38), and youngest player is Bruninha (20).

­­­­­­­___________________
THE HOPE PART II:
The Juan Carlos Amorós Effect?
When Amorós took over the Dash exactly halfway through the season (11 games down, 11 to go), their regular season record went from 4-3-4 to 6-3-2 and their average possession went from 44.5 percent to 50.5 percent. Goals and expected goals per game increased slightly. Can he do the same for Gotham?


THE PREDICTIONS:
Formation: 4-3-3
- Gotham ran mostly a 4-3-2-1 last season, but they started to shake things up throughout the second half of the season. When Amorós took over the Dash, he shifted them to a 4-3-3 and never looked back. I expect he’ll start with the same for Gotham.
Predicted Opener Starting 11:
I bet we see the same starting 11 as the preseason scrimmage on 3/11/23 (7-0 win over University of Pittsburgh):
GK: Abby Smith
Defense: Bruninha, Edmonds, Ellie Jean, Krieger
Midfield: Zerboni, Long, Ryan
Forwards: Onumonu, Purce, Williams
Subs: at least Nighswonger and Pickett, Farrelly if she’s signed, Mewis
Throughout the season, expect those subs + O’Hara to get the start too.


TLDR
THE SUMMARY:
If you want to root for an underdog this year, Gotham’s your team. They finished dead last in 2022, and they’ve made some big moves during the offseason, while retaining their biggest veterans and stars. If the squad can gel, Juan Carlos Amorós can take this team up. For Gotham, some renewed hope this season could go a long way. We’d love to see them win it all, but I think Gotham fans will be over the moon to see them make the playoffs. The competition is tough, is 2023 Gotham tougher?

THE BASICS:
Head Coach: Juan Carlos Amorós
Performance Coach: Philip Congleton
Goalkeeper Coach: Brody Sams
GM & Heaad of Soccer Ops: Yael Averbuch
Assistant GM: Nathán Goldberg Crenier
Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Oscar Vazquez
Physical Therapist: Erin Morton
Captain: McCall Zerboni (2022)
Stadium: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJ
Ownership: Founding Owners- Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, Steven Temares; Operating Owners- Kristin Bernert, Karen Bryant, Bobby Cho, Ed Nalbandian; Strategic Investors- Sue Bird, Kevin Durant, Pete Guelli, Rich Kleiman, Carli Lloyd, Eli Manning
Global Creative Advisor: Ashlyn Harris
Supporters Groups: Cloud9
Subreddit: GothamFC
Social Media: @GothamFC


THE SCHEDULE:
Opener: 9 pm EST Sunday, March 26th vs Angel City AWAY (BMO stadium, CA)
Home Opener: 7:30 pm EST Saturday, April 1st (no it’s not a prank), vs. OL Reign (Red Bull Arena, NJ)
First Challenge Cup Match: 7:30 pm EST Wednesday, April 19th vs Washington Spirit @ HOME (Red Bull Arena, NJ)



THE ROSTER:
Goalkeepers (3): Michelle Betos, Abby Smith (TRADE, THORNS), Mandy Haught
Defenders (10): Bruninha (INTL, BRZ), Imani Dorsey, Kristen Edmonds(TRADE,KCC), Sabrina Flores, Mandy Freeman, Ellie Jean, Ali Krieger, Nealy Martin, Kelley O'Hara (TRADE, WAS), Taylor Smith
Midfielders (7): Nahomi Kawasumi (INTL, JAP), Allie Long, Kristie Mewis, Victoria Pickett, Yazmeen Ryan (TRADE, THORNS), Delanie Sheehan, McCall Zerboni
Forwards (5): Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir (INTL, ICELAND), Jenna Nighswonger (DRAFT), Ifeoma Onumonu, Midge Purce, Lynn Williams (TRADE, KCC)
More to come (1): Sinead Farrelly (TBD-Contract Pending, historically midfield); scored in a preseason match for Gotham as a non-roster invitee on 2/25/23
On loan (1): Hensley Hancuff (GK), is on loan with Brisbane Roar FC until April 30th.
Injured (1): Taryn Torres (Midfield)


THE HISTORY:
What we want to forget:
All of 2022.
Everything after 2013? Gotham hasn’t reached the semifinals since their first season in the NWSL (2013). They reached the quarter-finals in 2021, but didn’t qualify any other year.
A bunch of other stuff that is available on the Wikipedia (and includes subjects of the Yates report and poor player conditions). And no, the main ownership has not changed since then (2016-2019), although Tammy Murphy allegedly took a more active role in club ownership and spearheaded improvements.
What we want to remember:
…
Gotham FC was known as Sky Blue FC before April 2021. Gotham (or Sky Blue) was founded in 2006 as a USL W-League team and has been part of the NWSL since it started in 2012. Their league record is 55-50-77. If they win every match this season, they can turn their win to loss ratio positive...


THE HOPE PART I:
THE PLAYER HIGHLIGHTS:
Kelley O’Hara, returning this year, played for the team in its inaugural NWSL season (2013) through 2017. Perhaps O’Hara’s presence at Gotham is a symbol of hope? Or at least of reasonable working conditions?
Sam Kerr holds the club record for most goals in a single season, for 17 goals in 2017. She is also the all time leading goal scored for Gotham with 28 goals.
Last season’s top scorers were Zerboni, Monaghan, and Purce – each with 3 goals. Mewis, Onumonu, and T. Smith scored 2 each, and Kawasumi scored 1, for a total of 16 goals over 22 regular season matches. Gotham allowed 44 goals.
Lynn Williams was tied for top NWSL scorer (11 goals) in the 2016 season when she was the NWSL MVP. We would love to see her do it again. Lynn is also a 3x NWSL Champion.
Kelley O’Hara is a 2021 NWSL Champion and 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion.
Allie Long is a 2x NWSL Champion and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Ali Krieger is a 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Nahomi Kawasumi is a 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
McCall Zerboni is a 3x NWSL Champion
Taylor Smith is a 2016 NWSL Champion
Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir is a 2022 Toppserien Champion. She scored 4 goals in 2022.
Jenna Nighswonger has a string of accolades, but it is her rookie year in the NWSL. She has played on the US Youth national team, and the U-23 team.
Gotham’s oldest player is Ali Krieger (38), and youngest player is Bruninha (20).

­­­­­­­___________________
THE HOPE PART II:
The Juan Carlos Amorós Effect?
When Amorós took over the Dash exactly halfway through the season (11 games down, 11 to go), their regular season record went from 4-3-4 to 6-3-2 and their average possession went from 44.5 percent to 50.5 percent. Goals and expected goals per game increased slightly. Can he do the same for Gotham?


THE PREDICTIONS:
Formation: 4-3-3
- Gotham ran mostly a 4-3-2-1 last season, but they started to shake things up throughout the second half of the season. When Amorós took over the Dash, he shifted them to a 4-3-3 and never looked back. I expect he’ll start with the same for Gotham.
Predicted Opener Starting 11:
I bet we see the same starting 11 as the preseason scrimmage on 3/11/23 (7-0 win over University of Pittsburgh):
GK: Abby Smith
Defense: Bruninha, Edmonds, Ellie Jean, Krieger
Midfield: Zerboni, Long, Ryan
Forwards: Onumonu, Purce, Williams
Subs: at least Nighswonger and Pickett, Farrelly if she’s signed, Mewis
Throughout the season, expect those subs + O’Hara to get the start too.


TLDR
THE SUMMARY:
If you want to root for an underdog this year, Gotham’s your team. They finished dead last in 2022, and they’ve made some big moves during the offseason, while retaining their biggest veterans and stars. If the squad can gel, Juan Carlos Amorós can take this team up. For Gotham, some renewed hope this season could go a long way. We’d love to see them win it all, but I think Gotham fans will be over the moon to see them make the playoffs. The competition is tough, is 2023 Gotham tougher?

The Basics:
Head Coach: Juan Carlos Amorós
Performance Coach: Philip Congleton
Goalkeeper Coach: Brody Sams
GM & Heaad of Soccer Ops: Yael Averbuch
Assistant GM: Nathán Goldberg Crenier
Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Oscar Vazquez
Physical Therapist: Erin Morton
Captain: McCall Zerboni (2022)
Stadium: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJ
Ownership: Founding Owners- Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, Steven Temares; Operating Owners- Kristin Bernert, Karen Bryant, Bobby Cho, Ed Nalbandian; Strategic Investors- Sue Bird, Kevin Durant, Pete Guelli, Rich Kleiman, Carli Lloyd, Eli Manning
Global Creative Advisor: Ashlyn Harris
Supporters Groups: Cloud9
Subreddit: GothamFC
Social Media: @GothamFC
The Schedule:
Opener: 9 pm EST Sunday, March 26th vs Angel City AWAY (BMO stadium, CA)
Home Opener: 7:30 pm EST Saturday, April 1st (no it’s not a prank), vs. OL Reign (Red Bull Arena, NJ)
First Challenge Cup Match: 7:30 pm EST Wednesday, April 19th vs Washington Spirit @ HOME (Red Bull Arena, NJ)

The Roster:
Goalkeepers (3): Michelle Betos, Abby Smith (TRADE, THORNS), Mandy Haught
Defenders (10): Bruninha (INTL, BRZ), Imani Dorsey, Kristen Edmonds(TRADE,KCC), Sabrina Flores, Mandy Freeman, Ellie Jean, Ali Krieger, Nealy Martin, Kelley O'Hara (TRADE, WAS), Taylor Smith
Midfielders (7): Nahomi Kawasumi (INTL, JAP), Allie Long, Kristie Mewis, Victoria Pickett, Yazmeen Ryan (TRADE, THORNS), Delanie Sheehan, McCall Zerboni
Forwards (5): Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir (INTL, ICELAND), Jenna Nighswonger (DRAFT), Ifeoma Onumonu, Midge Purce, Lynn Williams (TRADE, KCC)
More to come (1): Sinead Farrelly (TBD-Contract Pending, historically midfield); scored in a preseason match for Gotham as a non-roster invitee on 2/25/23
On loan (1): Hensley Hancuff (GK), is on loan with Brisbane Roar FC until April 30th.
Injured (1): Taryn Torres (Midfield)
The History:
What we want to forget:
All of 2022.
Everything after 2013? Gotham hasn’t reached the semifinals since their first season in the NWSL (2013). They reached the quarter-finals in 2021, but didn’t qualify any other year.
A bunch of other stuff that is available on the Wikipedia (and includes subjects of the Yates report and poor player conditions). And no, the main ownership has not changed since then (2016-2019), although Tammy Murphy allegedly took a more active role in club ownership and spearheaded improvements.
What we want to remember:
…
Gotham FC was known as Sky Blue FC before April 2021. Gotham (or Sky Blue) was founded in 2006 as a USL W-League team and has been part of the NWSL since it started in 2012. Their league record is 55-50-77. If they win every match this season, they can turn their win to loss ratio positive...
The Hope Part I:
The Player Highlights:
Kelley O’Hara, returning this year, played for the team in its inaugural NWSL season (2013) through 2017. Perhaps O’Hara’s presence at Gotham is a symbol of hope? Or at least of reasonable working conditions?
Sam Kerr holds the club record for most goals in a single season, for 17 goals in 2017. She is also the all time leading goal scored for Gotham with 28 goals.
Last season’s top scorers were Zerboni, Monaghan, and Purce – each with 3 goals. Mewis, Onumonu, and T. Smith scored 2 each, and Kawasumi scored 1, for a total of 16 goals over 22 regular season matches. Gotham allowed 44 goals.
Lynn Williams was tied for top NWSL scorer (11 goals) in the 2016 season when she was the NWSL MVP. We would love to see her do it again. Lynn is also a 3x NWSL Champion.
Kelley O’Hara is a 2021 NWSL Champion and 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion.
Allie Long is a 2x NWSL Champion and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Ali Krieger is a 2x FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
Nahomi Kawasumi is a 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Champion
McCall Zerboni is a 3x NWSL Champion
Taylor Smith is a 2016 NWSL Champion
Svava Rós Guðmundsdóttir is a 2022 Toppserien Champion. She scored 4 goals in 2022.
Jenna Nighswonger has a string of accolades, but it is her rookie year in the NWSL. She has played on the US Youth national team, and the U-23 team.
Gotham’s oldest player is Ali Krieger (38), and youngest player is Bruninha (20).
­­­­­­­___________________
The Hope Part II:
The Juan Carlos Amorós Effect?
When Amorós took over the Dash exactly halfway through the season (11 games down, 11 to go), their regular season record went from 4-3-4 to 6-3-2 and their average possession went from 44.5 percent to 50.5 percent. Goals and expected goals per game increased slightly. Can he do the same for Gotham?
The Predictions:
Formation: 4-3-3
- Gotham ran mostly a 4-3-2-1 last season, but they started to shake things up throughout the second half of the season. When Amorós took over the Dash, he shifted them to a 4-3-3 and never looked back. I expect he’ll start with the same for Gotham.
Predicted Opener Starting 11:
I bet we see the same starting 11 as the preseason scrimmage on 3/11/23 (7-0 win over University of Pittsburgh):
GK: Abby Smith
Defense: Bruninha, Edmonds, Ellie Jean, Krieger
Midfield: Zerboni, Long, Ryan
Forwards: Onumonu, Purce, Williams
Subs: at least Nighswonger and Pickett, Farrelly if she’s signed, Mewis
Throughout the season, expect those subs + O’Hara to get the start too.
The Summary:
If you want to root for an underdog this year, Gotham’s your team. They finished dead last in 2022, and they’ve made some big moves during the offseason, while retaining their biggest veterans and stars. If the squad can gel, Juan Carlos Amorós can take this team up. For Gotham, some renewed hope this season could go a long way. We’d love to see them win it all, but I think Gotham fans will be over the moon to see them make the playoffs. The competition is tough, is 2023 Gotham tougher?

I've known my friend "Dave" for over a decade and he has always been a very anxious person. He is a good guy but he is the type to be easily overstimulated, asking "are you mad at me" every five seconds, apologizing way too much over nothing, that kind of stuff. We've always been close and I've supported him the best I can but personally I can only handle him in small doses because of how anxious he is and it makes me really annoyed/anxious if I'm around it for too long (I've never ever told him this obviously.)
Yes I have tried getting him to get help. I have anxiety and depression myself and tried making doctor's recommendations and helping him look up techniques to deal with things etc. But you can lead a horse to water as they say.
He moved overseas a long time ago but we kept in touch over the years. I hate to admit it but I liked him a lot more from a distance because his anxiety wasn't in-person to set mine off all the time. It's easier to handle and help him over text.
For the past few years me and my local friends have gone down to Vegas every Summer. Nothing crazy happens but we all get along very well and we always have a really good time. I look forward to it every year.
Dave has always watched from the sidelines on Instagram and this summer he says he wants to join us. My friends are really chill and are happy to have him along. It's Dave's first big trip back home / back overseas. But I'm nervous Dave is just going to be anxious and cling to me the whole time because he knows me best and ruin my trip. I used to not be able to be around Dave for more than half a day at a time and we're going to be stuck together for a week while I'm trying to have fun. It's gotten to the point where I'm dreading it so much I almost don't want to go.
I have tried (gently) letting him know what we do in Vegas, how we go out to eat and roam a lot and how there are lots of people and bright lights and high energy. He doesn't seem to have a problem with this on paper but I've been with him in-person and seen him have anxious spells firsthand over much less stressful events. He isn't open to staying separately from us, either, because I suggested maybe getting a room at the same hotel so he can have a place to "retreat" to if things get overwhelming. He says that would be a waste of money and he would be lonely.
I've tried also gently telling him my concerns about his anxiety being set off. He says he feels like he's gotten better and that he wants to take a leap to branch out of his comfort zone because elsewise he never will.
I am NOT asking how to uninvite Dave or how to weasel out of him coming along. I'm not a coward. But he still hasn't gotten any professional help for his anxiety (I asked recently, before the trip came up), and though I hope he's in a better headspace now, I am afraid I'm just going to be annoyed with him the whole time and I don't want to do that to him because he's spending a lot of time and money to join us.
tl;dr I have a very anxious friend who has not gotten professional help in all the years I've known him and he is now coming with me and my friends on a big trip, and we are staying together. If this is the worst case scenario and my friend's social anxiety is just as bad as it was before he moved away, how do I properly act around an extremely anxious person without getting annoyed or snapping at him? How do I deal with "are you mad at me" questions all the time or him saying sorry constantly? I know it's not his fault so that's why I'm trying to figure out what I can do.
Thank you in advance for any help.

We lay together that night. It seemed that this act was the ultimate stress reliever and comfort between bonded pairs, we’d done the same in our time together in Chi’cagoa Rea. Though we had little enough time together thanks to her ship obligations in the immediate time after that, as she’d engaged in a few extremely profitable trade runs from Earth to a Dlamias outlying colony that conveniently enough had no patrol ships around to ask any nosy questions about arrests or charges…
We made up for the lost time when we could.
Lisa always took full advantage of that absence, though as for what she thought of the Captain’s absences, [Redacted]. The homeworld did not get around to properly securing the colony where the liquor flowed from, until after the Earth government asked that she be pardoned as a show of good faith given her ‘exemplary services rendered in the pursuit of harmony between worlds’.
Which was a fancy way of saying she had a fanbase and it would look good if she were in favor again. I wag my tail sometimes, thinking of the apocalyptic fury that must have run through some bureaucrat’s veins when they had to process that request for an outlier turned infamous pirate. Even if she didn’t target the Dlamias fleet, her ability to wreak merry havoc must have presented all kinds of headaches back home. Not to mention stealing the ‘official envoy’s’ place.
That one did eventually arrive and now made occasional trade runs in a triangle shape between Earth, Dlamias, and the Maxiki home moon.
But I digress.
Our laying together proved relaxing to us both, and when she was nestled against me in the bed we shared, I would be lying if I said I could easily return to my former existence in general isolation.
The more I thought about it, the more the concept of human ‘pack like’ families appealed to me.
And I had a lot of time to think about it.
Unsurprisingly, a few days later a small team of six grief therapists arrived, three of them with experience dealing with what humans referred to as PTSD or, ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ or what Dlamias referred to as WIOS or ‘War Induced Outlier Syndrome’. In the past I would not have recognized it, but I cannot unsee what I have seen. And that is that the term ‘outlier’ in there is not just a medical identification for a traumatized soldier, but a deeply embedded mistrust of nonlinear thought and a noncompliance with the common cultural framework our government has approved.
In short, it helped make outliers appear inherently untrustworthy, though to their credit they recognized that soldiers were victims of this rather than internally flawed in some way.
I wasn’t present when the exerts arrived, but was present when the engineers on loan from Earth were assisting the Red Spark’s engineers with the installation of several virtual reality systems akin to what Bonny Red described as experiencing on board Captain Archer’s ship fifty years earlier.
Of course the new models were far more versatile and realistic, or so their chatter said.
“Yeah these things are great.” The skinny engineer in plain white overalls said as he tapped it, “There aren’t many like this one out there, the sense data is a lot more immersive, and the time dilation software is such that these Arachnae 9000 models can give you almost anything you want, thanks to their embedded creation kits. Now you can modify your games and customize them to your liking, and with Genesis mode, you can create your own world and games within it, and jump to other peoples designs on the network in the same way as long as they’ve either made it ‘public’ or given you a passkey access code.”
“That’ll make a good training system.” The engineer, Scotty, remarked. “Do we get to keep these after the mission?”
“Hell if I know. But…disconnecting them would be damn tough. And I don’t have a disconnect schedule date. So…probably?” The human remarked, “I’ve got to say, I envy you these things. Even the capital ships don’t all have these yet.”
I pretty quickly figured out that some of the humans on board the ship had pulled a few strings to get some entertainment on board the Red Spark. And probably done it quickly too, using the therapist costs as a late rider on a bill or something.
It was a guess, but I suspect, a good one.
As for the therapists themselves, as these systems were hooked up, the humans tested them and began installing the programs they would need. You might find this strange given that time dilating virtual simulators were used in the human confinement system of justice, as well as it simple games and the older models were used as toys to play games.
But as it turned out, virtual reality was also used in therapy.
I was able to briefly try one out while the therapists explained.
A therapist named ‘Carl’ went over it while the program ‘World of Healing’ loaded.
What began as a silent black world in which I stood, neither falling nor flying, nor seemingly standing on anything at all, stars came into view first, billions of tiny lights twinkling in the darkness. The sorts of things that inspired the dreams of generations.
Then there was grassland, rolling hills, and I was standing on soft earthen and green.
Then the hills loaded terraces with yet more greenery, and around them appeared little babbling brooks, creeks of water with the occasional small fish leaping through the water from one place to the next.
Then, young men and women clad in the outfits of human nurses, the traditional red and white shades.
The therapist appeared beside me a moment later, stepping out of the darkness as his avatar loaded. “Let there be light.” He said with a wave of his hand, and the sun began to rise in the distance. There was a strange warming sensation, like I’d stepped out into an early summer day, as well as the feel of a breeze, I looked down at my body, my hairs were moving.
“That’s good.” He said and cracked a little smile, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Environments like this one are popular.” He said, “I actually worked on the development of some of these. The nurses,” he gestured to the unmoving simulations, “are designed to appear as nonthreatening as possible. Mostly female, but there is some demand for males as well. Do you know why?” He asked.
“No?” I didn’t, and as he began to walk down a trail of smooth stones that appeared beneath our feet, he explained.
“Do you know what the most common word among the wounded on the battlefield is?” He asked, and as we walked, I watched the scene continue to generate, the path leading to small islands of trees that swayed in the simulated breeze. I shook my head.
“Mother.” He replied. “Followed closely by ‘I’ and ‘want’ and ‘my’. In every language, the wounded scream for their mothers, even the fiercest, hardest, and most savage of men in their most painful hours, call for the one who provided care and comfort in their childhood. Usually, that is still the mother. Not always, mind you, but commonly.”
He smiled at the simulated nurse, and even without being activated, it made a radiant smile in return. “So we program the nurses of both sexes with simulated parental care and attention personalities. Ideally the personalities of the wounded based on known interview data are loaded beforehand to provide the best possible experience, thus allowing the AI to tailor itself to the needs of the wounded.”
I couldn’t deny I was impressed.
“And the environment?” I asked.
“A garden.” Carl replied, “Someone once said, ‘If any man has ever heard the voice of god, it was in a garden on a cool day.’ Our myths and legends often begin our existence in idyllic gardens. Of course we know those are just myths, stories. But it says something about our nature that when we need to create a paradise, ‘this’ is what we make.” He held his arms out as if to embrace the simulation.
“Running water has a calming effect, the feel of the ground and the breeze, the sun and the caring attendants, all serve to create the ideal environments for a group of wounded soldiers. The nurses,” he added, “can be taken over by real qualified people like myself to properly diagnose and help guide the healing of others. The truth is, we don’t heal anybody.”
“No?” I was surprised at his admission, and Carl stroked his russet beard and chuckled as he replied.
“No. A doctor of the body can claim he healed a disease or an injury. But people who deal with the mind, we are guides. That is all. PTSD isn’t something you ‘get over’. It doesn’t go away, it just goes from an open wound to a scar. It may hurt sometimes, like a scar, but it doesn’t have to dominate someone’s life. All we do, is try to make it easier for that scar to form. Environments like this?” He said rhetorically, “These are just ultra modern hospital beds.”
“Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, leave somebody in here for what feels like a hundred years until they’re a whole lot better?” I asked, and his head hung just a little.
“If we could do that, we would. But studies of simulation use show that long term continuous use makes it difficult to adapt to the real world again. In the distant past, astronauts who spent only a few weeks in space, took several days on Earth to remember that things they let go of wouldn’t just ‘float’ if they let go of them. I can only imagine how much coffee was wasted.”
He let out a mock gasp as we got to the little tree cluster where willow leaves hung in long strands to create a kind of gentle shadow casting barrier to the trunk within.
“If we leave somebody in a superhero game for what feels like a hundred years, they’ll try to use those powers in the real world. If we leave somebody here in paradise for a hundred years, they’ll no longer be able to function in reality. And time dilation in a simulation isn’t exactly the same as actually lived reality either. Even the best AI is predictable to a degree. The real world, not so much.”
That was unfortunate, but even so, I could see the use.
“So, an hour per day drawn out to a few days at a time for the grieving, the wounded, and whoever we need. We have simulations for almost everything. From the wounded veterans, to those who grieve the dead in a thousand times a thousand ways.” Carl seemed to me to be equal parts proud of, and saddened by, the existence of this simulated world.
“It gets really bad, doesn’t it?” I asked and out of curiosity, when we crossed a hill to find ourselves amidst an apple orchard, I reached up to pluck a bright red fruit from a branch. It felt so real in my hands. And there was even a real scent to it. ‘I wonder, can I taste it?’
“It does.” Carl replied. “A few decades ago there were some xenophobes who were protesting… something. I don’t remember what it was, I was a child at the time, but some of them managed to get a bunch of guns somewhere and took over a bridge and blocked a road. They brought out their wives and children to use as human shields, trying to force the government to kill them to create sympathy for their cause.”
The apple tasted fantastic, but at his words I coughed and spat and he slapped me several times on the back. This ran entirely counter to everything I’d studied in human society. My work showed that humans valued their offspring and mates to such an extreme degree that harming them was akin to suicide if the survivor got a chance to exact revenge.
“I see that sounds strange to you.” He affirmed and asked, “Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes but…” He slapped my back a few more times and then finished.
“There’s a subset of humans for whom mates and children are property, this is a dying cultural remnant of the past, but it dies hard. Xenophobes wouldn’t hesitate to use those they’re supposed to protect, as pawns for their vicious causes. My father actually worked with both the people who confronted them, and the unarmed people that were rescued.”
“How did it come out?” I asked.
“I was just a kid, I don’t know all the details. But the media stories that spun about it accused the xenophobes of every kind of abuse on their spouses and children, thousands of people were ‘doxxed’ when they posted support for the xenophobes actions. It’s like somebody was out to get them. It got messy, they were a laughing stock, referred to as maniacal cowards, and there were a lot of cartoons and comics where people whose faces and names were out there, became villains to be laughed at and despised. I guess pretty much any evil thing is easy to believe if you’ll put your own kid or your own spouse between you and a bullet just so other people will feel sad for you.” “I mean, were there deaths or…?” I wished I hadn’t asked, but he shook his head.
“No, not exactly. Some clever bastard came up with the idea of walling them in. They pushed these big metal walls into place to surround them, then tightened it up. Slid a roof overhead, and then gassed the lot of them with something to knock them out. There was a lot of gunfire, it made the news, but seeing them shooting at giant metal walls while hiding behind their families did nothing to help their cause. But there were a lot of people who needed mental healthcare to recover from that incident. That’s why I do what I do. My father did it, and I saw how badly it was needed. It’s kind of my purpose, I guess you could say.” Carl said and reached up to take a bite of an apple for himself.
“Tastes like reality.” He said, and then asked, “Have you seen enough?”
“Yes. But… thank you for coming, I think you can do a lot of good up here.” I said and he quickly recited the exit code.
“Admin Red Spark Arachnae nine thousand. Exit simulation.” He said, and the world faded away to nothing.
I was sure of one thing at least.
The wounded hearts were in good hands.

5
From Mirror to Window: Curing Psychoanalysis of its Narcissism
The apparently individual conflict of the patient is revealed as a universal conflict of his environment and epoch. Neurosis is thus nothing less than an individual attempt, however unsuccessful, to solve a universal problem. - C.G. Jung (1912)
Narcissism is now the rage, the universal diagnosis. In Freud's world, the new attention was on conversion hysteria; in Bleuler's, on dementia praecox. Earlier we find all ills attributed to the English malady, to the spleen, to hypochondriasis, to melancholia, to chlorosis; in Paris, a myriad of phobies and délires. Different time and places, different syndromes.
Narcissism has its theoreticians - Kohut, Kernberg, Lacan - and modern Jungians are following the rage. The collective consciousness of psychology makes us collectively unconscious, much as Jung said when writing about the collective ideas in his day. Being "with it" also means being in it. The epidemic diagnosis Narcissism states that the condition is already endemic to the psychology that makes the diagnosis. It sees narcissism because it sees narcissistically. So let us not take this diagnosis so literally, but place it within the historical parade of Western diagnoses.
Eminent cultural critics - Karl Krauss, Thomas Szasz, Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, Paul Zweig, and the notorious Dr. Jeffrey Masson - have each seen that psychoanalysis breeds a narcissistic subjectivism inflicting on the culture an iatrogenic disorder, that is, a disease brought by the methods of the doctors who would cure it.
I shall continue their line of thought, but I shall use a method that Wolfgang Giegerich has so brilliantly exposed in many of his papers. If depth psychology itself suffers from a narcissistic disorder, then what we analysts need first to probe is the unconscious narcissism in analysis itself. Our first patient is neither the patient nor ourselves, but the phenomenon called "analysis" that has brought us both to the consulting room.
The term "Narcissism" is probably British . Havelock Ellis is credited with its invention, though Freud gave us its psychoanalytic meaning. What did Freud say? As I go through some of his descriptions, let us hear them narcissistically, as self-referents, descriptive of psychology and of ourselves in psychology.
1917: "We employ the term narcissism in relation to little children and it is to excessive narcissism of primitive man that we ascribe his belief in the omnipotence of his thoughts and consequent attempts to influence the course of events in the other world by magical practices." Does not analysis have this primitive omnipotence fantasy of influencing events in the outer world by its magical practices? The omnipotence of subjective reflection is attested to by many classic Jungians like Harding, Bernard, Meier, von Franz, Baumann, etc. As Jung himself says, we are each "the makeweight that tips the scales" that determine the outcome of world history." The rituals of self-engagement remove projections from the world so that, supposedly, the world itself is transformed by psychoanalysis.
1922: "... narcissistic disorders are characterized by a withdrawal of the libido from objects." The withdrawal of the libido from from objects - I ask you to remember this statement. We shall come back to it.
1925: Freud describes three historic blows to humankind's narcissism. These, he says, are the cosmological blow of Copernicus, the blow of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and the psychoanalytic blow (of Freud) which wounded the omnipotence fantasy, or narcissism, of the ego as sole self-willed ruler. Here, psychoanalysis becomes itself a giant omnipotence fantasy, a creation myth of our culture equivalent with astronomy and biology, promulgating itself with narcissistic grandeur.
This pronouncement appears in Freud's discussion on resistance to psychoanalysis. By means of this idea resistance, analysis brilliantly maintains its invulnerability to criticism. Questioning the validity of analysis is impugned as resistance to it. Even more: the very attacks demonstrate resistance and therefore help to validate analytical theory. As Freud says, "The triumph of narcissism, the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality ... It insists that it is impervious to wounds dealt by the outside world."
Later Freud considered narcissism not to be rooted in love at all, i.e., as self-love, but to be rather a defense against aggressive impulses. Let us consider for a moment the value of "aggressive impulses," at least and at best they take the object, the world out there, into account: I feel enraged about societal injustice, nuclear danger, media crap, industrial callousness, the corporate mind, political ideologues, hideous architecture, etc. But, owing to my narcissistic defenses against the involving call of aggression, I go to the spa, work out, meditate, jog, diet, reduce stress, relax my body armor, improve my orgasms, get a new hairstyle, and take a vacation. And see my therapist: very expensive, very good for me, because he or she devotes complete attention to my problems, especially our transferential frame. Instead of the world and my outrage, I work on my analysis, myself, the Self. This Self, too, fits a narcissistic definition: "the incorporation of grandiose object images as defense against anxiety and guilt" or, as Fenichel puts it, one feels oneself in "reunion with an omnipotent force, be that force an archetype, a god or goddess, the unus mundus, or the numinosity of analysis itself.
Freud's paper "On Narcissism" states that both introspection and conscience or "being watched" derive from and serve narcissism. Yet, psychotherapy practices self-scrutiny as the principal method in its treatment and "being watched" or supervision as the principal component of its training. A candidate goes to hour after hour of institutionalized narcissism of watching and being watched.
The institutionalization of narcissism in our profession - the idea of resistance, the idealization of the Self, the practices of introspection and supervision, the omnipotence fantasies about its own importance in world history, its technique of referring all events back to itself as the vessel, the mirror, the temenos, the frame - bears immediately upon that central obsession of analysis today, transference.
*
By transference, here, I mean that self-gratifying analytical habit which refers the emotions of life to the analysis. Transference habitually deflects object libido, that is, love for anything outside analysis, into a narcissistic reflection upon analysis. We feed analysis with life. The mirror that walks down the road of life (Flaubert) replaces the actual road, and the mirror no longer reflects the world, only the walking companions. They may as well have stayed indoors, less distracted by the trees and the traffic.
The principal content of analytical reflection as transference is the child we once were, a fact which accords with Freud's observation that the object choice of the narcissist is "someone he once was.” This helps account for the faddish popularity of Alice Miller’s writings. Her idealized children exhibit what Freud said: the narcissist is “not willing to forego his narcissistic perfection in his childhood” and “seeks to recover the early perfection.” The focus on childhood traps the libido only further into subjectivity, and therefore we must recognize that erotic compulsions in analysis are produced primarily by the analysis, rather than by the persons. Analysis acts itself out through them quite impersonally so that they often feel betrayed and ashamed by the impersonality of the emotions they undergo and are unable to recognize that what they are suffering is the object libido trying to find a way out of analysis. Instead, the narcissistic viciousness of our theory says that transference emotions are compelling the persons to go deeper into analysis.
Let us recognize that the other person - patient or analyst - embodies the only possibility within an analysis to whom object libido can flow. The person in the other chair represents cure of analytical narcissism simply by being there as an Other. Moreover, the patient for the analyst and the analyst for the patient become such numinous objects because they have also been tabooed as libidinal possibilities. Analyst and patient may not act their desire for each other. The narcissism of the situation makes them absolutely necessary to each other, while the taboo sets them absolutely outside of each other. This outside object however, is also inside the analysis. So, patient for doctor and doctor for patient become the symbolic mode of ending analysis by means of love.
Of course, the persons are often torn by what Freud calls the love dilemma of the narcissistic patient: “the cure by love,” which he generally refers to as cure by analysis. We must ask whether this neurotic choice, as Freud calls it, arises from the narcissisms of the patient or from the narcissism of the analytical system in which the patient is situated. After all, the fantasy of an opposition between love and analysis occurs within the prior fantasy of cure which has brought the persons together in the first place.
By elaborating ethical codes, malpractice insurance, investigations, and expulsions that blame the participants, analysis protects itself from wounding insights about its own narcissism. The vulnerability of analysis - that its effectiveness is always in question, that it is neither science nor medicine, that it is aging into professional mediocrity and may have lost its soul to power years ago despite its idealized language by growth and creativity (a language by the way, never used by its founders) - this vulnerability is overcome by idealizing the transference.
As well as transference love, there is also hatred. Perhaps the client’s hatred of the analyst and the hatred of the analyst for the client are also not personal. Perhaps, these intense oppressive feelings against each other arise in both to present both with the fact that they are in a hateful situation: the object libido hates the attachment of transference. Analysis hates itself in order to break the narcissistic vessel imprisoning the libido that would go out into the soul in the world.
The horned dilemmas of transference, including the analyst’s stare into the mirror of his own counter-transference, the feelings of love and hatred, this agony and ecstasy and romantic torture convince the participants that what is going on is of intense importance: first, because these phenomena are expected by the theory and provide proof of it, and second, because these phenomena re-enact what analysis once was in its own childhood in Vienna and Zurich, analysis in primary fusion with its origins in Breuer and Freud and Jung, in Dora and Anna and Sabina. The feelings are cast in therapeutic guise because this is the healing fiction of the analytic situation. In other words, transference is less necessary to the doctor and the patient than it is to analysis by means of which it intensifies its narcissistic idealization, staying in love with itself. We therapists do not sit in our chambers so many hours a day only for the money, or the power, but because we are addicted to analytical narcissism. Our individual narcissism is both obscured and reinforced by the approved narcissism of the analytical profession.
When one partner imagines a tryst or the other imagines resisting a seduction, or when either imagines that love is a solution to misery, then they are framed in the romantic conflicts of Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, and Anna Karenina, reconstituting the Romanticisms of the nineteenth century and the origins of psychoanalysis, not in your or my personal childhoods, but in its own cultural childhood. This means we have to locate the narcissism of contemporary analysis within a much wider narcissism: the Romantic movement.
*
Literary tradition differentiates at least four principal traits of this genre. We have already spoken of one, “idealization of the love object.” And indeed analysis idealizes the patient as an “interesting case,” “difficult patient,” “good patient,” “borderline personality.” Or consider all the literary fabulations that have made patients into eternal literary figures - Dora, Ellen West, Babette, Miss Miller, Wolfman, Ratman, Little Hands, all the way to Freud and Jung themselves in the novels The White Hotel and The House of Glass. Think of the Romanticism of our theoretical constructs: Love and Death, Empathy, Transformation, Growth, The Child, The Great Mother, The Mirror, Desire and Jouissance, and the Transitional Object. In the patient there takes place such idealized events as a hieros gamos, a quest for self-discovery and a journey into wholeness. Synchronicities outside of causal laws, transcendent functions, integration of the shadow and the realization of the Self on whom the future of civilization depends. We record our idealization of the love object, i.e., analysis, in taped and filmed analytic sessions, paying meticulous and expensive attention to trivial conversations and gestures. Analysis is in love with its idealized image.
A second essential trait of Romanticism is said to be the opposition between bourgeois society and the inner self that, with its dreams, desires and inspirations, tends to oppose, even contradict, the outer world of usual things. Psychoanalysis from its beginnings imagines itself fundamentally opposed to the civilization and its institutions of religion, family, medicine, and the political community disdained as “the collective.” Freud’s emphasis on himself as Jew and hence marginal, as well as Jung’s favorite position as heretical old hermit (despite the bourgeois lives they led and values they held) still shapes the imagination of the profession and distorts its relation to the ordinary world.
Third, imprisonment another basic theme in Romanticism, especially French and Russian. In Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, Maria’s song says: “This tiny cell suffices me, there I will dwell my soul to save.” The consulting room provides the confining physical place for the psychic imprisonment of analysis as such its devotion to the secret nooks and crannies of the private world, decorating with reconstructive rococo (i.e., psycho-dynamic intricacies) the narcissistic cell of personality.
Fourth, the Romantic genre has been defined as one that simultaneously seeks and postpones a particular end. This fits therapy. Its entire procedure seeks to restore the person to the world, yet postpones this return indefinitely. (Meanwhile, do not make major changes in your actual life. Don’t act out. The cure of analysis becomes more analysis-another analyst, another school - and the improvement of training becomes ever more hours.) The simultaneity of seeking and postponing an end occurs in the basic conundrum of every analysis, its contradictory two commandments: encourage the desires of the unconscious (Thou Shall Not Repress) and forbid gratification (Thou Shall Not Act Out). Our work is with the libidinous and our method is by way of abstention. The end is unforeseeable; there is no completion. Analysis interminable, as Freud said. This is the Romanticism of eternal longing.
There is no way out of Romanticism’s consulting room and the subjectivism of its eros, unless we turn to what is beyond its purview, turn to what narcissism and romanticism leave out: the objects, the unidealized, immediately given, actual world of dull and urban things . By turning psychological attention from the mirror of self-reflection to the world through the window, we release “object libido” to seek its goal beyond narcissistic confinement in analysis. For “object libido” is but a psychoanalytic name for the drive which loves the world, the erotic desire for Anima Mundi, for Soul in the World.
Perhaps it becomes clearer why I have been emphasizing John Keats’s remarkable phrase; “Call the world … The vale of Soul-making. Then you will find out the use of the world.” Also, you will understand why I have held myself back from that side of Jung which expounds upon meaning, Self, individuation, unus mundus, wholeness, mandalas, etc. . These large and introverted ideas envelop me and usually my patients with a grandiose, invulnerable aura. As well, I keep a distance from the current Kohut craze and Lacanian mystique. Although recognizing narcissism as the syndrome of the times (even if the groundwork for this was prepared long ago in the metaphysical catastrophe of Augustinian and Cartesian subjectivism); yet, Kohut attempts its cure by the same means of narcissistic obsession: an ever more detailed observation of subjectivity. And a subjectivity within the oppressive confines of a negatively reconstructed childhood. The child archetype dominates contemporary therapy, keeping patients (and analysts) safe from the world. For this archetype feels always endangered by the actual world, lives not in the present but in futurity, and is addicted to its own powerless infantilism. By so focusing on the child, analysis disenfranchises itself from wider realm of soul-making in the adult community of polis.
Nevertheless I must confess to a serious long-standing error on my part regarding Keats’s phrase. I always considered the world out there to be useful for making one’s own soul. Narcissism again. My soul, your soul - not its soul. For the Romantics, however, ensouling the world was a crucial part of their program. They recognized the traps of narcissistic subjectivity in their vision. Hence, they sought the spirit in physical nature, the brotherhood of all mankind or Gemeinschaftsgefühl, political revolution, and a return to the classic gods and goddesses, attempting to revivify the soul of the world with pantheism.
We must therefore read Keats as saying we go through the world for the sake of its soul-making, thereby our own. This reading suggests a true object libido, beyond narcissism, in keeping with Otto Fenichel’s definition of love. Love can only be called such when “one’s own satisfaction is impossible without satisfying the object too. If the world is not satisfied by our going through it, no matter how much beauty and pleasure our souls may receive from it, then we live in its vale without love.
There is a way out, or I wouldn’t be standing here. For my specific style of narcissism, my pose before the mirror, today is heroic. My style insists on resolution of the issues raised. The method I shall be using here follows the method which I usually empty for resolving issues. First, we look back into the history of psychoanalysis for a model; second, we turn to some peculiar bit of pathologizing for a clue; and third, we resolve problems by dissolving them into images and metaphors.
So, let us turn back to the first psychoanalytic case, Anna O., and her doctor, Josef Breuer, who, with Freud, wrote Studies in Hysteria. As you recall, after a year of almost daily sessions often of several hours, he suddenly terminated. You recall also the intensity of her transference, that she developed a hysterical pregnancy and childbirth, after Breuer tried to end the treatment. He, according to Jones, after a final visit to her “fled the house in a cold sweat. The next day he and his wife left for Venice to spend a second honeymoon which resulted in the conception of a daughter.” Whether fact or not, and Ellenberger says not, the fantasy shows a founding patron of our work escaping both cure by analysis and cure by love for the beauty of Venice and the conception of a daughter. His object libido returns from the oppressive narcissism of psychoanalysis to the Romanticism of the wider world.
This wide world remains merely that, merely a place of escape or acting out, so long as the world “out the window” is imagined only in the Cartesian model as sheer res extensa, only dead matter. To show more vividly how that world is, as Keats said, a place of soul, let us go straight through the window into the world. Let us take a walk in a Japanese garden, in particular the strolling garden, the one with water, hills, trees, and stones. While we walk, let us imagine the garden as an emblem for the peripatetic teacher or the therapeutic guide (psychopompos), the world itself as psychoanalyst showing us soul, showing us how to be in it soulfully.
I turn to the garden and to Japan because of insights given while in Kyoto gardens several years ago, and also because the garden as metaphor expresses some of the deepest longings - from Hesperides, to Eden’s paradise, and Maria’s hortus inclusus - for the world as home of the soul. So by entering into the Japanese garden now we shall be stepping through the window into the anima mundi.
First we notice that the garden has no central place to stand and view it all. We can but scrutinize a part at a time. Instead of overview and wholeness, there is perspective and eachness. The world changes as we move. Here a clump of iris, there a mossy rock. Instead of a center (with its etymological roots in the Greek kentron, “goad” or “prick,” and being compelled toward a goal by means of abstract geometric distancing), there are shifts of focus relative to the body’s location and attitude.
Second: as one strolls, each vista is seen again from a different perspective. The maple branching down to the pond edge, the floating leaves appear less melancholic after the path bends. These shifts of seeing again are precisely what the word “respect” means. To look again is to “respect.” Each time we look at the same thing again, we gain respect for it and add respect to it, curiously discovering the innate relation of “looks” - of regarding and being regarded, words in English that refer to dignity.
Third: when the garden, rather than the dream or the symptom or the unconscious, becomes the via regia of psyche, then we are forced to think anew about the word “in.” “In” is the dominant preposition of all psychoanalysis - not with, not from, not for, but “in.” We look in our souls, we look in a mirror. "In” has been utterly literally, as an invisible, spacelesss psychic stuff inside our skins, or meanings inside our dreams and symptoms, or the memories locked in the past. Interiority of the garden, however, is wholly present and wholly displayed. “In” holds the meanings of included, engaged, involved, embraced. Or, as Jung said, the psyche is not in us; we are in the psyche. This feeling of being in the psyche becomes most palpable when inside the ruins of a Greek temple, in an Egyptian tomb of a king, in a dance or a ritual, and in a Japanese garden. Jung’s phrase “esse in anima” takes on concreteness then, as it does in a clear-cut forest, a bombed city, a cancer ward, a cemetery. Ecology, architecture, interior design are other modes of feeling the anima mundi. Instead of the usual notion of psyche in body, the body strolling through the garden is in the psyche. The world itself is a psychic body; and our bodies as we move, stand, look, pause, turn, and sit are performing an activity of psychic reflection, an activity we formerly considered only mentally possible in the mirror of introspection.
Fourth: the idea of individuality also changes, for in the Japanese garden trees are trimmed at the top and encouraged to grow sideways. Rather than an individuality of the lone tree, towering (and Jung said the single tree is a major symbol of the individuating Self), these trees stretch their branches toward others. Individuality is within community and, takes its definition from community. Furthermore, each tuft in the soft branches of the pine trees is plucked by gardeners. They pull out needles, allowing emptiness to individualize the shape of each twig. It is as if nothing can be individualized unless it is surrounded by emptiness and yet also very, very close to what it is most like. Individuality is therefore more visible within the estrange separateness and close similarity, for instance, of family than in trying to be “different” from family.
Fifth: not only are aged trees supported with crutches and encouraged to flower - blossoming belonging therefore not only to youth - but also the garden includes dead trees. What more wounds our narcissism than these images of old age, these crutched, dependent, twisted and dead trees? < “At least Aurora didn’t reject Tithonus, old, didn’t allow him to lie there lonely in the House of Dawn. She often fondled him, descending into her waters, before she bathed her yoked horses with care. She, when she rested in his arms, by neighbouring India, lamented that day returned too soon.”>
Sixth: the Karesanui gardens, or Zen-inspired gardens, present mainly white sand and found stones, rarely trees. In this bare place the mind watches itself making interpretations. The nine rocks in the raked sand are a tiger family swimming through the sea; the nine rocks are mountain tops peaking through white mist and clouds; the nine rocks are simply rocks, aesthetically placed with genius. One legend after another, one philosophy, theory or literary criticism, or psychological interpretation rises to the mind and falls back into the white sand. The garden becomes wholly metaphor, both what it is and what it is not, presence and absence at once. The concrete koan of the rock garden transforms the mind itself into metaphor, its thought transient while image endures, so that the mind cannot identify with its own subjectivism - narcissism overcome.
“This Open happens in the midst of beings. It exhibits an essential feature which we have already mentioned. To the Open there belong a world and the earth. But the world is not simply the Open that corresponds to clearing, and the earth is not simply the Closed that corresponds to concealment. Rather, the world is the clearing of the paths of the essential guiding directions with which all decision complies. Every decision, however, bases itself on something not mastered, something concealed, confusing; else it would never be a decision. The earth is not simply the Closed but rather that which rises up as self-closing. World and earth are always intrinsically and essentially in conflict, belligerent by nature. Only as such do they enter into the conflict of clearing and concealing.” - Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art.
‘“Hegel introduces this notion of ‘oppositional determination” in his logic of essence, when he discusses the relationship between identity and difference; his point there is not only that identity is always the identity of identity and difference, but that difference itself is also always the difference between itself and identity; in the same way, it is not only necessity that encompasses both itself and contingency, but also - and more fundamentally - it is contingency itself which encompasses both itself and necessity. Or, with regard to the tension between essence and appearance, the fact that essence has to appear within the domain of appearances, as a hint that “appearances are not all” but are “merely appearances.”’ - Zizek, Less than Nothing>
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Finally, I shall insist that the garden is not natural; nor is psyche natural. The garden was designed and is tended to maintain an artificiality that imitates nature . In Fort Worth, Texas, a large and marvelous Japanese garden was constructed years ago. But since adequate funds were not set aside for gardeners from Japan, nature slowly destroys that garden. Without the pruners’ perverted twist to each inch of nature, the garden declines into merely another part of the forest. A garden’s elaborate display of soul-in-the-world is an opus contra naturam, like alchemy. Like alchemy, the garden is a work of intense culture. Unlike alchemy, its matter, its body, is out there, rather than inside the glass vessel.
Because the garden is artificial, as the alchemist was called artifex, all conceptions of soul must be plucked of naturalistic fallacies. The soul as opus contra naturam will not be served adequately by fallacious comparisons with organic growth, cyclical process, and myths of nature goddesses. Nor does the garden shelter the child from which grows the creative person as psychotherapy is found to believe. By insisting upon the artificiality of our work with soul, I am trying to keep us from the Romantic error of confusing the ideal (Eden and the Elysian fields; Horaiko, in Japanese) with the natural. The garden as metaphor offers a romantic vision that saves us from Naturalistic Romanticism by twisting and sophisticating nature through art.
This twist to nature that wounds idealizations of garden is presented in our culture, as in Roman culture, by our ancient god of gardens and gardeners, Priapus. Priapus is neither young nor beautiful. Unlike lovely Narcissus, unlike the semi-divine figures of Adam and Eve, Priapus is mature, bald and paunchy, and so distorted that his mother, Venus, deserted him at birth. His very presence repels romantic idealizations and the gaze into the mirror of Venusian vanity as well as Narcissus’s rapt reflection. Priapic reflection starts the other way around; his preposterous swollen condition reflects the vitality of the world. The same force displays in him as in the buds and germinating pods. By means of distortion which deceptively seems “only natural,” Priapus invites the grotesque pathologized disproportions of imagination - and imagination, says Bachelard, works by deformation.
So, when I invoke Priapus, I am not speaking of priapismus; I am not speaking of machismo; and I am not anti-feminine. Let me be quite clear. I am speaking of the generative artificiality that is the essence of the garden and of the psyche. Each dream, each fantasy, and each symptomatic complication of natural health and normative humanity bears witness to the psyche’s libidinal pleasure in exaggeration, its fertile genius for imaginative distortion. If this god of gardens is also a god of psychoanalysis - and from Charcot through Lacan the priapic has been invoked - he brings to its work an archaic reflex beyond the romantic or baroque, a rousing urgency forward and outward. (Priapus was not permitted indoors in Hestia’s closed rooms where his presence becomes only violent and obscene.)
Moreover, this god needs no mirror to know himself, for his self is wholly displayed. His nature cannot be concealed within, so he is quite free of hidden meanings and subtle innuendos that keep psychoanalysis hopefully addicted to one more revelation, one more transformation, interminable. Priapus knows no metamorphosis, no transfigurations. Priapus is without ambiguity; metaphor is forbidden to him; he displays all, reveals nothing. Like the garden, all there. The rocks are the rocks.
<"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." - Matthew 16:18>