Author: Dr. Hare

Right before I left Manhattan for my European summer, I saw Dr. Hare in her Upper East Side office, and when I left made some bad joke about the tribal pressures to fit the stereotype of the lost but curious artist, “of having started to make photographs of myself to understand my own history, my own place in the world better” – I’m sure you know that very deep art talk well. Of course, Dr. Hare saw right through my pretense, and this morning I received the following message from her (with my response to her below it):

“Dear Jens,

thank you for your note from Italy, it was good to hear from you. I actually put some thought into your case (if you allow this impersonal formulation) since our last session. Two things have become clear to me. First, that you are not putting everything on the table in our conversations – surely not when it comes to talking about your childhood. Second, that your photographic projects have always been personal, but maybe, as a sign of progression in your self-understanding, should become even more personal. One way or another, I have come to the following conclusion: your next – and I dare to say, your defining – photographic project should be a biographical project. You have given away too little from your past for me to make any more definite suggestions, and of course I know that this is anyway not the role of the therapist (though I admit that I am tempted, I’ve always loved the creation of images). Could you go back to the places and the people of your childhood? Why not read the essence of your life from the faces of those who raised you? Or rather, from the pictures you would take of them? From how I know you, this may be the roundabout route that you need. Clarity will not come from therapeutic conversations. It will have to be an artistic process, since this is the medium in which I sincerely think that you will eventually face the issues that matter to you most.

Don’t be out of touch again for so long, it is important for you to pursue this. And think about my ideas. I look forward to touching base again, and to seeing you in our much-loved Manhattan.

Take care of yourself,
Dr. Hare”

“Dear Dr. Hare,

you know that few things make me happier than receiving mail from you, and in particular, mail in which you – as you so rarely do – leave the confines of your role as therapist, and talk to me as you did in your last email. It seems very possible that you are right, I should go and photograph the people who shaped my life, and I should read from their faces. I’m not yet sure that I can get myself to do so. The mountains, where I am right now, are interlocutors of a different kind (I know what you will say, they don’t talk back to me and they really aren’t interlocutors – that’s true and not true, but I won’t get into this).

I feel that I am at a turning point in my life and that I need some more weeks here in Italy before I fully turn to thinking about the issues that you address. But be assured, every word of yours sinks into my heart.

Do take care of yourself too,
Jens”

“Dear Dr. Hare,

I spent last weekend at a philosophy conference at Princeton University, furthering and enhancing my American experience. Ironically, the night before, I saw the movie “A Beautiful Mind” about the life of John Forbes Nash, a math student at Princeton in the mid 1940ies, who later in his career was diagnosed with “paranoid schizophrenia”, came back to Princeton, was somehow tolerated on campus regardless, and went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his “Nash Equilibrium”, which applied to Game Theory (out of curiosity, I just looked it up: as of 2007, Nash is still an active member of the Department of Mathematics at Princeton). So now I have a feel for this side of the country—a not unattractive mix of elitism and irreverence, I think. However, both the movie and the, occasionally, rather fierce conference, gave me pause with a view to my own life. While the act of photography itself does not necessarily leave your brain unused, the things that follow (the gallery scene, the art business, etc.) seem to. So where does that leave me with respect to the beauty of the mind?

But I’m writing to you about a somewhat more immediate question that I have (and, as you know, I do appreciate so much that, apart from our appointments, you do communicate with me by email, and have allowed me to post some of this on Notes From Nowhere [see here or here]). So my question is: Can one ever feel at home again as an expatriate? I hesitate when I write ‘again’, because I’m not sure that I ever felt at home, or ‘rooted’, anywhere in my whole life. You might think that it is suggestive and interesting—and I would love to hear your ideas on it—that when I think of ‘roots’ here I think of the mountains, which visually doesn’t seem to make sense. We’ve talked before about my fantasies that Manhattan’s skyscrapers are mountains, I know, and that I perhaps just should get over it. But something about mountains is deeply reassuring, and skyscrapers just do not have this effect on me. I do know that you have a number of patients from overseas––so, in your experience, can expatriates ever feel like being truly at home?

Thanks so much, as always,

J.”

“Dear Jens,

it is good to hear from you, I had a sense that something wasn’t quite right—you didn’t show up for our last meeting, and rather than emailing me directly, you emailed my assistant. My sense is that it would be helpful if we could meet for actual sessions more regularly, rather than corresponding in this somewhat erratic fashion. But I know that you are traveling most of the time, so this is what your life is like.

Forgive me for saying that, to me, your fascination with mountains seems to point to deep issues. We talked about this before, and I guess I thought that you might get over it in some way by working on your Mountain Project in the Dolomites [here…]. But I now see that you haven’t, and that your fixation on the mountains is only getting worse. What is going on with you, Jens? I think that you will find what you seek not by moving to the mountains, but by understanding why you do not have the kind of stability in your life that the mountains seem to suggest to you. Feeling at home need not be a matter of where you are—it might be a matter of not doubting what you are doing, and embracing your life. And do remember that, in the past, you have sometimes felt very much at home here, and that there are some who would miss you dearly if you left for a life lived entirely in the Alps.

Let’s talk soon at my office. It’s true that you can write to me, and that I am happy to write back. But I’m not sure that this can take the place of a real conversation.

Regards,
Dr. Hare”

As you know, my therapist Dr. Hare has agreed that I may post some of the issues we are dealing with relating to my little Manhattan life. Except for her name, everything else is very true. This from our latest e-mail exchange:

“Dear Dr. Hare,

I am so sorry that I had to cancel this week’s appointment. It always takes me a little, or rather, a little too long, to settle in again when I am back in the city.

Last night I went to a dinner party near Broadway and 85th. Had to. You know how much I hate parties. Mostly brainy, Upper West Side intellectual types. Quite a contrast to the Italian mountain folks I’ve been dealing with recently. There was a well known New York art critic present who could actually make or break (well, maybe not break) my career with a stroke of a pen. Literally. He’s retired, but still rather active – his verdicts are all over the place. Well, instead of promoting myself and sucking up to him, I seriously started a debate about Pop Art and was my dismissive self re contemporary photography. Which he of course finds – as he told a charming and increasingly mystified woman innocently standing next to us, with an odd, indulgent smile on his face – “so interesting, but maybe a little pornographic” (I kept thinking, every man needs a good friend who reminds you to shoot yourself once you hit an age where you find parking lots pornographic). While we both hated each other right away, I actually enjoyed that at some point he got upset enough to leave the party prematurely. Another bystander later tried to tell me that things hadn’t gone all that bad, but he was in denial – it was truly horrible.

Then, and this is why I’m writing to you, there was this young woman (apparently she had just graduated) who kept telling everybody how much her fiance is going to make in his first year as a dentist (USD 185.000, according to her). She really seemed excited about this and oddly reminded me of the old man talking about the parking lots. Now, there are many things that I don’t understand about women, and I certainly don’t understand the last thing about American women – especially those from well to do backgrounds: Why do they spend the first 18 years of their lives consuming approximately 1000 movies about “true love”, cry their hearts out watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or “Sleepless in Seattle” even if they’ve seen those a hundred times before, then get a great western education in some ivy league college to sharpen their minds – and then marry someone for his salary? Is this a case of genes winning over culture? I do see the inherent logic of course, but I still want to understand all this more fully. (I am aware that this is kind of a practical question, and a general one too. You may not be interested to go there. Still, the issue bothers me quite a bit.)

Also, recently I’ve picked up an old habit and started to take pictures of animals again.

Hope to see you as soon as things calm down a bit. I do appreciate that I can write to you, as of course you know.

Jens”

“Dear Jens,

the subject of American women tends to come up with all my patients from overseas – men who in some ways love the US, but simply cannot get around the fact that they could never see themselves loving an American woman. Which of course causes great psychological turmoil, so no need to worry that you are raising the issue. For how can anyone consider coming to this country for good if there is no prospect of love?

However, here are a couple of points. First, it may seem pedantic to remind you that, according to your own – rather nebulous, I admit – account, you do have a girlfriend. Perhaps this is why you are presenting the issue as theoretical and academic, rather than practical and immediately pressing. But be that as it may (and I repeat what I have said before: I am not sure whether you are being completely frank with me when you mention this ominous girlfriend, who supposedly is, of all things, a philosophy professor, this being a detail which does not make your story any more plausible).

Second, and somewhat more to the point: Go and spend some time with American women, and you shall come to appreciate one of the deepest truths ever – we love what we know. European men have come up with what seem to me rather wild constructions (the ‘victory of genes over culture’, in your case) in order to mask an experience which all of us find bewildering and unsettling: encountering what we don’t know and don’t understand. More than in landscapes and buildings, this experience shocks us when it concerns other human beings. And worse than anything, other human beings whom we would like to think of as potential lovers! You think you see an overly materialistic outlook. But really, believe me, you simply see something you don’t know. Only time can heal this, and this means, only time spent here, rather than with your European mountain friends.

So I hope you settle in fast, and shake off the memories of by-gone cultures, seemingly still alive in the Alps! I find your shots of animals lovely (I know that’s not what you like to hear, but after all, I’m not an art critic), and I do admit that they make me see things a little from your point of view. But I worry that they are part and parcel of your escapist tendencies.

Let’s talk soon, and as long as you don’t feel like you’ve regained your inner balance, perhaps it is better to stay away from the big shots of the art world. You may need them! And like us American women (yes, I live here too!), you might come to see them differently at some point in the future.

Speak soon,

Dr. Hare”