Makes me want to shine up my trowel...

So, as we do every Monday at noon, we had psychotherapy lecture today. And Dr. Jabba says, kind of as an offhand comment, "Psychiatry is like archeology." Which was closely followed by a comment about digging around in people's heads.

I've been amusing myself with this analogy all afternoon.

It's a pretty good analogue, I think.

Consider an archaeological dig. You start out with shovels, right? Sometimes backhoes. It's not delicate work. It's general, it's rougher, you have a basic idea where you're going and what you're looking for, but more or less, you just dive in.

But then you start to find evidence that there's something else there. So you park the backhoe and pull out smaller implements. You take spade-fuls of dirt away. You carefully pull off layers with your trowel. It's not super fine work, but it's more careful. And you take a closer look at what's in the soil you pull off.

And then you find something - a flash of metal, a change of texture, the smell of putrefaction. You expose a little more, gently, but rarely does it just plop out, all intact and pretty. So you pull out more cautious tools for that, delicate, tenuous things that require great care and a little skill. You're still gentle with the surrounding material, but you focus more on the piece at hand.

Sometimes the artifact comes out in pieces that you have to reassemble. Sometimes it comes out intact, and in pretty good condition. Sometimes it really does dislodge itself and plop out at your feet. Sometimes, you sift and sort through all that dirt, you think you've found something really important...and it turns out to be a plastic cup from McDonalds. And not the prehistoric McDonald's, either.

Such is it with therapy. You start with general ideas. People usually have a reason they come to see you. It's rarely what's really at issue, but it gives you a place to start. Together you dig, you sift, you sort, through layers of their past, looking at what turns up in the process. Eventually you find something that seems somewhat more important, so you slow down, you take note. You usually dance around it for a while. You observe, you examine, as it comes to light. Sometimes it comes out in pieces. Sometimes it makes an inglorious entrance. Sometimes, you look at it and say, "aha!" And then it's your job to figure out the significance of it. Often that may not be readily apparent, until you find more artifacts around it - the context of it, what accompanies it, what's related. You catalogue, you examine, you explore, and then you set it aside and keep digging, because there's always more to find, always more to know.

And some days? You work and work and work and still come up empty handed. But when all is said and done, you find what you find, whether or not it was what you were looking for.

Hmm.