While waiting for more about Kathy

• Thoughts about Kathy by Ginger Schenck, 4/18/98
  
  

Ginger Schenck's questions for Polly Bloomberg-Fretter are some that I am hoping to learn about, too. I am glad that we are promised some material that will be less compressed, so that we can have a better sense of how Kathy's sessions unfolded.

In the meantime, I am glad that Don Nathanson (On, and in Sunshine) was stimulated to make his remarks. I like very much the name "bimodal" for the two basic parts of psychotherapy that unite our profession: empathic listening; and a way of understanding oneself that is ego-syntonic to the therapist and thus available to the patient.

I also like Don's elucidation of our current undifferentiated overuse of depression as a diagnostic label. Whenever a patient brings up the D word, I translate it into a feeling of one's being pushed down, which is as much dynamic mileage as I can get from it.

• Less Compressed Clues by Polly Bloomberg-Fretter, 4/21/98