A Sidelong Glance at Psychotherapy

Abstract

The unruly and fleeting lived experience of Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne, as wonderfully described and evoked in his Essays, strikes a surprisingly resonant chord with my own experience of the therapeutic conversation. Rather than explaining or defining his experience, Montaigne cultivates it, like fine wine. He draws us into the richness of his world, abuzz with conversations and cheer. Ever the personable and attentive host, he makes room for each of his lively guests: his readers, his classical ancestors, his contemporaries, and himself. While chatting with one person, he acknowledges others through playful sidelong glances, creating a festive order. I use Montaigne's metaphor of the sidelong glance as a starting point of inquiry into what actually goes on in therapy, as a way of relooking at what is close to us already. Our essayistic frame is unabashedly first-person, limited, dialogical, embodied, and wobbly. We see how this metaphor points to the shared horizon of essaying and therapy: that of the humanities. And we learn that therapy itself is an invitation to rediscover the resources of the humanities, to rediscover how to be together in a human world—an understanding that is increasingly obscured in our modern age.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Bernd Jager for his hospitality, intellectual generosity, gentle guidance, and unbounded curiosity. This article, like all of my doctoral work, grew out of our countless conversations, and is shaped by his humanist vision of psychotherapy. I feel very fortunate to have found such a teacher, exemplar, and friend.

Notes

¹Montaigne's Essays are a classic work with few accepted translations; therefore, traditional Montaigne scholarship notes the translator's initial, book number, chapter number, and page range (e.g., F, I:8, 25). In this article, I refer to translations of the Essays by Donald Frame (Montaigne, 2003), M. A. Screech (Montaigne, 1991), and Charles Cotton (Montaigne, 1877). Citations to their translations appear in text by the convention named above. Please note that this is a deviation from The Humanistic Psychologist's in-text author–date citation convention, as outlined by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed..

²This is taken from Frame's (1965) translation of a Latin inscription painted on the wall of a room connected to Montaigne's library: “In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquillity, and leisure” (p. 115)..

³The Renaissance was an era of great discovery and rediscovery of the New World of the Americas and the ancient classical world respectively..

⁴Frame translates “mise en regard” as “from a distance.” I prefer “to be seen in light of the other.”.

⁵For an excellent illumination of the value of particular reflection over abstract theory in talk therapy, I highly recommend Heaton's book, The Talking Cure Wittgenstein's Therapeutic Method for Psychotherapy (2010)..

⁶The poet Ben Jonson (another admirer of Montaigne) echoes Seneca in the collection Timber; or, Discoveries Made upon Men or Matter, line 1661, published in 1640.

⁷In 1634, the Académie française was founded with the aim standardizing and preserving the French language. To this day, the esteemed Académie continues to protect the purity of the official French language, in part by preventing words from other languages from being incorporated..

⁸For this reason, I admire Sarah Bakewell's (2010) biography of Montaigne, the first in 50 years. Her plainspoken book rises to the challenge of staying true to the Essays’ vision, thus serving as an excellent introduction to new readers..

⁹ http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/montaigne/h/bordeaux_copy/

¹⁰From the poem, To G. A. W., published in 1817.

¹¹Hail sceptic ease! When error's waves are past, How sweet to reach thy tranquil port at last, And, gently rock'd in undulating doubt, Smile at the sturdy winds, which war without! (Moore, 1823, as cited in Bakewell, 2010, p. 126).

¹²(Yizhar, 1959, as cited in Grossman, 2010, p. 165).

¹³Recall Descartes’ famous announcement that he enters the philosophical arena with his face hidden: “I come forward, masked” (larvatus prodeo; Descartes, 1985, p. 2).

¹⁴A cupbearer in Montaigne's era held a highly privileged position as the King's intimate confident. He would serve drinks to the King and often taste the wine before serving it. His tasks of creating hospitable and secure conditions are interestingly analogous to those of a therapist.

¹⁵For a detailed exploration of this pivotal historical moment, see my paper “Should We Be Writing Essays Instead of Articles? A Psychotherapist's Reflection on Montaigne's Marvelous Invention” (Starr, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Starr

Rachel Starr is a PhD candidate in humanistic psychology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, studying under Bernd Jager. She looks at how psychotherapy can be understood and enriched through engagement with the arts and humanities, and why this is important. Currently, she is writing about what it might mean for therapists to receive the gift of the Essays and the essay form as part of our cultural heritage.