Jeff Fine-Thomas

"It seems to me that the overarching theme among psychodynamic approaches to helping people is that the more honest we are with ourselves, the better our chances for living a satisfying and useful life." - Nancy McWilliams

“Closely related to identification and empathy is the assumption that subjectivity, far from being the enemy of truth, can promote a much more comprehensive understanding of psychological phenomena than objectivity alone.” - Nancy McWilliams

I’ve been posting a ton of quotes from Nancy McWilliams (because she’s amazing!). I was also testing the idea that the X algorithm uses intermittent reinforcement. X seems to put one post in front of more people every 10 to 12 days. I probably could have googled that.

This week I’ll be writing a few pages to add a section on motivation to a chapter. I’m reading The Archaeology of Mind by Panksepp and Biven to prep for the section.

Just a quick update on the book Nancy McWilliams and I are co-authoring - Our deadline to get the complete draft to the publisher is the end of Sept. At this point, we have all 7 chapters written and are making some adjustments to concepts here and there.

I’m going to try to cross post on X and Bluesky (my handle there is @jefffine-thomas.bsky.social) so if you prefer one, you can find my account there.

The hardest psychodynamic skill is simply listening in a way that encourages clients to keep talking so that the therapist can get a sense of the associative networks behind the patient's experience. — Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Supervision

"The main 'instrument' we have in our efforts to understand the people who come to us for help is our empathy, the main 'delivery system' of that empathy is our person." - Nancy McWilliams

"Seemingly discreet problems can rarely be well understood in isolation from the person in whom they exist." - Nancy McWilliams

"The assumption that, as therapists, we don't know what we will learn about a patient, is both realistic and healing." - Nancy McWilliams

"The curiosity about how any individual's unconscious thoughts, feelings, images, and urges work together is the engine of the therapist's commitment and the bulwark of the patient's courage to be more and more self-examining and self-disclosing." - Nancy McWilliams

"It is not difficult for a careful observer to see the evidence for unconscious processes in other people; it is harder to grasp the reality that we ourselves are inhabited and moved by forces beyond our access or control." - Nancy McWilliams

"Falling in love is one of the few common experiences that makes most people aware of how remarkably lacking in control they are over the emotionally powerful situations in which they find themselves." - Nancy McWilliams

"Most fundamentally, psychoanalytic practitioners take seriously the evidence that the sources of most of our behaviors, feelings, and thoughts are not conscious." - Nancy McWilliams

"Moreover, a psychoanalytic sensibility appreciates the fact that honesty about our own motives does not come easily to us." - Nancy McWilliams

"People may sexualize any experience with the unconscious intention of converting terror or pain or other overwhelming sensation into excitement." - Nancy McWilliams

"By enacting frightening scenarios, the unconsciously anxious person turns passive into active, transforming a sense of helplessness and vulnerability into an experience of agency and power, no matter how negative the drama that is played out." - Nancy McWilliams

"Analysts use the word identification to connote a mature level of deliberately, yet at least partly unconsciously, becoming like another person." - Nancy McWilliams