This is evil.

In my never-ending need to make sure billionaires have sufficient extra capital to purchase the essentials—like penis-shaped rocket ships—I found myself this morning buying what I like to think of as stupid shit online. These things were not completely without value; I have an office to decorate and a team to draw together and motivate. But my purchases were by no means things I required in a hunter-gatherer sense of my life. I found a small statue of an ancient mythological character and thought, now this is something that not only would look good in my office, but has a lot of deeply symbolic meaning, which made it even more perfect for the bookshelf behind my desk.

I have noticed lately that people have been asking me—because I’m a psychologist—what I think about “the homeless problem.” The question is almost always followed by a sidebar like, “It’s a lot of mental illness stuff, right?” Depending on who is asking, I’ll sometimes give what I call the simple answer: “Not as much as you’d think.” But sometimes (including yesterday) I’ll offer a fuller and, as this person put it, more nuanced answer. That nuanced answer usually begins with something like, “The occurrence of significant mental illness in the U.S.

I’ve been a psychotherapist for closing on 20 years and while I can say I’ve seen a lot I certainly have not seen it all. I saw something today that threw me off enough to break my silence and write this post. It was a subreddit I follow and the post was from a young woman whose therapist had unexpectedly died. Termination, as it is called when therapy ends, is hard on the patient under the best of circumstances but when it is unexpected and final it can be very difficult for the patient to deal with.

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