TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT

How to connect with your own needs.

Psychotherapist Weber makes her book debut with a thoughtful look at the potential of therapy “to uncover the hidden longings, the cloak-and-dagger feelings, the stories of desire we imagine for our unlived lives.” Through examples distilled from her work with a variety of patients, she hopes readers will be able to recognize what they really want from their “one precious life” as well as the obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling those desires. The author frames each chapter, anchored by a case history, with her insights about 12 common longings, including for love, power, control, attention, freedom, and understanding. Besides offering intimate details of a patient’s struggles, Weber also reveals the frustrations and doubts that arise in caring for them. “I am a demanding therapist,” she admits. “I want therapy to spark something and change life in some way.” But some patients make her task difficult. One woman, for example, was “entrapped by repetition compulsions” that took the form of “drinking rituals,” bingeing and purging, and “circular fights with her ex-husband, and her parents, and her siblings.” Her psychotherapy sessions, too, were “full of repetition and circularity.” Several case histories, in fact, reveal frustrating repetitiveness as patients rehash their troubles. Some patients refuse to acknowledge their real needs; others try to distract the therapist from asking uncomfortable questions. Weber is gently persistent: “Therapists are like truffle pigs when it comes to vulnerability: we go hunting and rooting around until we find what we’re looking for.” The author highlights useful terms—some she’s coined herself, all defined in a glossary—to describe behaviors such as sufferiority, meaning “a sense of pride and exceptionalism that is mixed with feelings of shame and inadequacy”; askhole, someone asking for advice and then ignoring it; and femasculating, referring to the disempowerment of women.

A perceptive guide to self-knowledge.