Roses at Giverny, an Anima Projection
Ellen drinks gin and does lines of coke whenever she's alone. She likes to listen to a Fiona Apple CD for hours on end. Her favorite song is "Criminal." The coke and gin help her hold on to the feeling of the lyrics: "I've been a bad, bad girl, careless with a delicate man. Don't tell me to deny it. I've done wrong and want to suffer for my sins cause I'm feelin' like a criminal." Ellen doesn't look like a criminal. She's a beauty in her mid-twenties, with a heart of gold. And she's good at her job. The problem is she has to go to client dinners that terrify her. She copes by slipping away to the ladies' room for a few lines of coke, then goes back to her clients - all married men in their forties - and performs like Funny Girl. She's a scream they tell her, never misses a beat. Then one of them tries to finger her under the table. Last week Ellen's boss - also married in his forties - surprised her with two tickets to Paris. "A bonus for the great work you've been doing," he said. "And to show you how much I care for you." Back in her apartment he told her he'd love to be the one she decides to take to Paris. Then he hugged her and started to touch her. Ellen ran to the bathroom and did two lines of coke. The next day she called in sick and came to her therapy session in tears, mumbling over and over, "I'm bad, bad, bad!" That weekend Ellen's father came to visit. He's a dear clutz of a man, a sweet nervous wreck who tries hard to love Ellen but can't see her. No matter how hard she tries, she can never make him happy and winds up feeling like a criminal when she sees him suffer. On this visit he came with his 25-year old girlfriend. Ellen hasn't spoken to her mother since her early teens when she split with her father. Back then her mother used to scream at her over and over again that she was a bad, hateful girl.

Vinny feels like he just crawled out on a limb. He finally gave Cindy an engagement ring and they plan to be married in six months. But Vinny is beginning to doubt if they can make it together. Cindy has the wrong look even though she's pretty and sexy. The thing is she's not dark-eyed and Sicilian but blue-eyed and Irish. Vinny's also uptight about their sex life. Before they got engaged, he was really turned on by Cindy even though she'd sometimes grow passive and sort of go out to lunch on him as they made love. Vinny'd get frustrated but always felt he could bring her around. Now Cindy comes on to him all hot and lubricated and he can barely get it up. Sex has been a drag ever since he gave her the ring. About a week ago, Vinny dreamed he was driving to the wedding. On the way he got sidetracked shopping for the right clothes to wear. When he arrived at the church, Cindy was gone. She'd taken off with a jock Vinny knew from college, a guy who'd always been better at sports than he was. Vinny lingered in back of the church crying silently, feeling like an outcast.

Susan knew she wanted Tom the first time she laid eyes on him. He's charming, passionate, clever at his job and knows a lot about wine and good restaurants. And there was something about Tom - she could never quite put her finger on it - that excited and made her feel wicked. It was partly because he was absorbed in his work the first year she knew him and it both thrilled and amused her to seduce him away from it. It was also because of his personality which made him a challenge for Susan. Tom is unbearably self-centered, extremely critical and when things don't go completely his way he gets hysterical. He's not the easiest person in the world to be with. Lately - the day after Tom had a temper tantrum on the Pennsylvania Turnpike - Susan has started to wonder why she ever got involved with him. Soon after she started therapy, she realized that Tom treats her in exactly the same way her mother treated her father. When Susan talks about it, she gets panicky because she believes she'll never find anyone better than Tom.

Bill is a gifted therapist who uses films, plays and fiction to inspire the people he works with. He tells other peoples' stories with passion and feeling and is encouraged in the telling to believe he has the talent to tell his own story in an original screenplay. But each time Bill tries to write, his mind gets muddled. The passion drains out of him and he's filled with torpor that barely hides his despair. He pushes himself anyway. He'll type sentence after sentence and run to a thesaurus to check himself, never shaking the fear that he's nothing but a clumsy jerk wearing his cultural awareness like an ill-fitting suit to a black tie affair. When Bill was much younger, every time he wanted to try something new - starting a newspaper in grade school with an old hand-cranked printer, buying a used car in high school after he passed his driving test - his mother would frown at him and say to his father, "The boy's all talk, nothing but talk." So today Bill talks passionately about other peoples' stories and lives like a shadow artist, barely able to find the words to tell his own story.

In his book Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell would say that Ellen, Vinny, Susan and Bill are caught up in thoughts and feelings that got lodged in them as they grew up, while their real thoughts and feelings, their true selves, were beaten into hiding. Most of us can only catch glimpses of our true selves in dreams or in conscious projections like the one at the top of this page. This image is what Jung called an anima projection, a beautiful picture taken by someone moved by the roses in Claude Monet's garden at Giverny.

How would Susan feel in Monet's garden? Could she ever be happy walking in it with Tom? Will Vinny ever feel worthy enough to let himself find the garden on his honeymoon with Cindy? Will Ellen always be too terrified and filled with self-loathing to even think of roses, let alone savor them with a young single guy who might enjoy her even more than the roses? And Bill, can he ever stop being his mother's mouthpiece long enough to take in the fragrance of the roses, the way they make him feel inside, and maybe write about them?

Joseph Campbell described 12 stages in a hero's journey, a journey of self-discovery, that we've applied to psychotherapy for Susan, Vinny, Ellen and Bill:

1. The Ordinary World of the hero with its suffering, boredom and neurotic anguish.

2. A Call to Adventure when the ordinary world is no longer endurable and the hero is ripe for change.

3. Refusal of the Call when the hero is scared at first and avoids the challenge.

4. Meeting a Mentor who acknowledges, supports and spurs the hero onward.

5. Crossing the First Threshold when the hero begins to feel weird and really gets anxious.

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies when the hero feels more stress and anxiety than before and is tempted to pack the whole thing in but finds people who can help, and a few who can hurt.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave where the hero glimpses the dark side of his true, hidden self.

8. The Supreme Ordeal in which the hero attempts to use those parts of his true self that terrified and shamed him before.

9. Reward for Seizing the Sword when the hero slowly discovers new passion and begins to feel a steady, daily glow from harnessing the power of his true self.

10. The Road Back when the hero must adjust his new-found passion to the demands of the ordinary world, a trying time for imaginative heroes impatient with bureaucracies and the tedious people who inhabit them.

11. Resurrection when the hero glimpses his impending death, takes his "What have I done with my life?" exam and grades himself.

12. Return with the Elixir when the hero shares what he's learned with younger heroes and heroines in the ordinary world.

Most people who come to A Psychotherapy Group in the Village are struggling somewhere between the second and third stages. We help them take the plunge into the fourth stage and continue to acknowledge, encourage and support them through the later stages.

Our counselors, social workers, psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and consulting psychiatrist have advanced training at The Post-Graduate Center for Psychotherapy and Mental Health, Washington Square Institute, The National Psychological Association for Pschoanalysis and more than 60 years collective experience in: Addictions, Anxiety Disorders, Art Therapy, Bereavement Counseling and Support, Depression, Dissociative Disorders, Dream Interpretation, Eating Disorders, Expressive Therapy, Primal Therapy, Grief Counseling, Marriage and Couples Counseling, Mood Disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Stress Management for those in finance and trading and Substance Abuse.

A Psychotherapy Group in the Village is in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York City at 160 BLEECKER ST., 9C EAST, NYC 10012, directly south of Washington Square Park and the campus of New York University.