Intriguing article by Dana Goodyear out of The New Yorker: "Hollywood Shadows - A cure for blocked screenwriters"
About Barry Michels and Phil Stutz.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_goodyearBy far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. “They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,” he says. “Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he’s answerable to, but it’s not human. It’s Time itself that’s passing inexorably. That’s why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you’re defying this authority figure.” Procrastination, he says, is a “spurious form of immortality,” the ego’s way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death.
That jolted me. I've never heard such a simple explanation: the ego clutching at immortality.
Gulp. You won't find a lazier writer than me. Hate it when those simple truths sink in.
Followup "Ask The Author" session:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2011/03/dana-goodyear-barry-michels.htmlDana: "I found myself delighted by the notion of high-level working Hollywood writers using Jung to get through pitch meetings. After talking to Michels about the shadow I spooked myself by trying to imagine mine late one night in the house alone . It was like 'The Shining.'"
Dana: "My favorite is called Swiss Cheese, which is a drawing of a rectangular lump dotted with holes to represent moments of uncertainty or inertia experienced by the patient. To explain this, Stutz told me the story of an actor patient who was unable to conduct his life without the apparatus of a production around him telling him what to do. He’d call Stutz in the morning to report that he had woken up, and ask what he should do next. (That moment of being lost was represented by one hole in the cheese.) Stutz would tell him to go for a run, and tell him how long to run for, and so on throughout the day."
