I was fortunate enough to live for many years in an antebellum house on the banks of the beautiful Wabash River in Indiana. It was my pleasure to walk along the banks nearly every day and wade the shallow parts of the river when I could. The river was peaceful and slow moving, but punctuated here and there with gravel-bottomed shallows where the mussels could be found. I took lots and lots of photographs of this wonderful place. The photo shown here I took while on one of my wading excursions looking for mussels. If you’ve never seen a live mussel on the bottom of a river, they’re difficult to spot. As with many things for which we “hunt”, once you finally identify a mussel on the river bottom, you see them everywhere. Once you’ve seen them, you never forget what they look like. This photograph and that experience of finding my first mussel bring to mind the process of psychotherapy: within the safe, private space of the therapy room, my patients explore the hidden pools of their own true selves. We go where patients intuitively know to go. Together we wade carefully and intentionally, looking for what has never been seen, what has never been acknowledged. Within that small space, during that brief hour, week after week, we discover desires, hurts, wishes, flaws, strengths and aspirations that hide just below the surface. Once it is seen it cannot be un-seen. Just as the river mussel sat waiting to be found, through this process of psychotherapy patients find clarity to see what was always there, unrecognized, unacknowledged, within themselves.
Beneath The Surface
