Away From Family Or Work, What Is Your Passion?

August 1, 2021,

If someone described you as a Freudian Ice Queen, would you view it as a compliment?

We sense we know the answer to the question but we give pause because when you break down the components of the phrase, they actually are very positive.

Freud was an extremely bright Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.

Very nice. Often needed.

Let’s talk about ice.

Boy could we use some now, all over the Northwest, as the weather is scorching. It can be so refreshing used in the beverage of your choice.

Queen signifies a woman of dignity, power and influence, sometimes over an entire kingdom.

Yet when you speak to others about the name Freudian Ice Queen, they often laugh sardonically and project her as a woman who lacks the ability to empathize or put herself in "another's shoes". A woman who lacks empathy in situations where another's needs are clearly greater than her wants.

Paul Weston, that was not very nice.

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In Treatment is an American drama television series for HBO, produced and developed by Rodrigo Garcia, about a psychotherapist, 50-something Paul Weston, and his weekly sessions with patients, as well as those with his own therapist at the end of the week.

The program, which stars Gabriel Byrne as Paul, debuted on January 28, 2008, as a five-night-a-week series. Season 1 earned numerous honors, including Emmy, Golden Globe and Writers Guild awards.

Paul snarled those words to his second therapist Adele.

The guy seems to be a little angry. No wonder he needed two therapists.

Here is how the series producer HBO describes Adele, “In order to get a new prescription for sleeping pills, an exhausted Paul visits a young, serious and intelligent therapist named Adele, and is compelled to confront deep-rooted fears about his health, his divorce, his patients, and his all-encompassing relationship with former therapist Gina Toll.”

Young, serious and intelligent. We concur.

Interesting. Not an Ice Queen description in sight.

So why would Paul say that to her?

Because she did what other therapists did not. She challenged Paul to examine his pre-conceived notions of who he was and it made him frightened and angry.

Here is what HBO had to say about Paul, “As Dr. Paul Weston continues to struggle with the aftermath of his divorce, he faces new emotional and physical challenges - including hand tremors that he fears might be the onset of Parkinson's Disease, which killed his father. Frustrated with his new patients and coping with his teenage son Max who has moved in with him, Paul seeks the guidance of a younger psychoanalyst, Adele.”

There seems to be a lot on Paul’s plate.

In our opinion, Adele is the most effective therapist we have ever met in real life or on television.

We tend to have very analytical personalities and she observed things about Paul that were right in front of our faces all along and we didn’t see it. At least not clearly. Paul is exceptional at obscuring the view.

She came along in Season Three, and up until then we viewed Paul from lofty and very together great heights.

From time to time he did behave in questionable ways.

Like getting romantically involved with a beautiful young patient after she left therapy. Yes her therapy with Paul had concluded but still, in terms of ethics, that was like skating near the edge of the cliff.

Oh, then there was the time when he got in a physical altercation (yes, a fight) with one of his other male patients who kept pressing his buttons about the same young woman who he was actually sleeping with.

How many therapists have you met who get into physical confrontations with their patients?

Oh well, minor details.

Other than that, Paul seemed like a great therapist. Truly.

What we missed was that Paul’s whole approach to his practice, very burrow like in a dimly lit room where he deeply engaged with his patients, sometimes becoming too friendly and blurring lines, masked something very important.

His main issue was hidden because he was indeed exceptional at what he did. At least we thought so.

We loved taking the journey with those he counseled because when they first visit Paul, they appear to be one person, often very troubled, but by the season’s end, they make incredible breakthroughs that clearly change their approach to their old life, creating a far more effective new one.

We saw so many episodes of Paul working his Freudian magic inside off the office that we missed one extremely pertinent side effect.

He had no life outside of the office.

He was virtually not involved with anything or anyone outside of his practice, including his wife and two children, hence the groundwork for the divorce.

Most important, he wasn’t passionate about anything, away from work.

Not a big deal you say?

Isn’t it though?

Why do we ask?

We can’t say enough in our travels and discussions with others how so many people are not passionate about anything. It is very surprising. We often ask them a simple question. Other than family or work, what do you love in life?

Most, like Paul Weston, couldn’t come up with an answer.

Why might that be significant? Because at some point you are most likely to lose both.

One day we will all be laid off or retired and our children with grow up and leave the home.

Then what are you left with?

This is why, in part, Adele made Paul so uncomfortable. Other than his work, he virtually had nothing else going on in his life.

And his former life did eventually burn to the ground.

How could we miss that?

If we were to bump into you at a group encounter or therapy session and you were asked about what you love in life, what you are passionate about, that will outlive your work and extend beyond you children’s stay at home, what would you say?

It is a simple question.

If you don’t have an answer to that question, shouldn’t you develop a plan to find one?

What if you don’t?

The extreme is that some people end up homeless or housed and desperately lonely. We can’t say enough that when we watch the YouTube channel Invisible People, about the homeless, a common thread in a number of their sad and painful stories is that their spouse died or left them.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh4pyZUB0mNzieaKv831flA

We say this because, hopefully it doesn’t happen to you, like it did to us.

While we were never homeless, it did raise a question. Once everything about your former young adult life burns to the ground, where do you go from there?