Thinking is hugely important, but on its own, within therapy, it is not the key to fixing our psychological problems. There is a crucial difference between broadly recognising, for example, that we were shy as a child and re-experiencing, in its full intensity, what it was like to feel cowed, ignored and in constant danger of being rebuffed or mocked. Or we might know, in an abstract way, that our mother wasn’t much focused on us when we were little. It is another thing entirely to reconnect with the horrific feelings we had when we tried to show her something we loved or tell her of a deep upset and she wasn’t interested. Therapy builds on the idea of a return to live feelings. It is only when we are properly in touch with feelings that we can correct them with the help of our more mature faculties and thereby address the real troubles of our adult lives. Oddly, this means that intellectual people can have a particularly tricky time in therapy. They become interested in the ideas, but they don’t so easily recreate and exhibit the pains and distresses of their earlier, less sophisticated, selves. And it is these parts of who we are that need to be encountered, listened to and – perhaps for the first time – comforted and reassured. Therapy demands that we not try to be too clever and accept the need to feel lost and confused.
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