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Therapy by text message?

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Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi sea storm,

Thanks for your comment.  I very much appreciated and agreed with your thoughts.  You might enjoy my latest 10-minute play/comedy, “Dr. Frank, Therapy App” which addresses these very issues.  Your lines (above) spoken between the text-messaging therapist and patient could well have been included!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/559751

Richard

P.S.  BTW, I mailed the play to my 90-year-old father who was both the head of a research engineering lab and a psychoanalyst.  A perfect reader, IMO, given the particular themes!  He liked it “very much” and wanted to pass it along to other family members ;-)

Dr. Richard Grossman:
Thanks, tt!  I'm glad you enjoyed it.  As I've said before, you write beautifully and thoughtfully.  Have you ever taken any creative writing classes?  Perhaps the creative part is yet to be uncovered...

Richard

sea storm:
I read your play and found it very intelligent and creative. I am not good at reading plays, seems I am lost without body language. Even though it would contribute to the trend to make people more generic and robotic, I think that a lot of people would really go for the counseling app. I guess that is why Dr. Phil did it. To me it is Orwellian creepy.

The father of the computer is an interesting guy who destroys his own best creation out of envy and competitiveness. Especially difficult to understand when the creator is a superbrain. There are some large issues there.  Can"t help but wonder about your father the engineer and psychoanalyst. I may be completely out of line but........
He is going to send it to members of the family....... Maybe it is all sweetness and light, hope so. He just might take it all personally.
I hope we are not conditoning people to completely avoid contact and use technology as a soother.

Sea

sea storm:
Sorry.

I don't think I really understand the play. It made me think and struggle to understand it. I probably leaped to conclusions that were inappropriate. It is brave of you to share your play and thank you.

Sea

Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi Sea,

No, you got it just right!  For me, the play addresses, in part, the issue of what is helpful in therapy, and why after all my psychoanalytic (and other) training (Harvard Medical/ Mass General Hospital post doc, etc.) in the end I rejected it viewing it more as religion than science.  Of course, as a naïve 23 year old, I expected to find the brightest people in the world at Mass General, and instead I found myself on a self-built lifeboat floating in a sea of narcissism and politics.  But I did what Timothy, the protagonist in my play does:  I fired Mass General, learned from the “bad” things and shaped my career, in part, around the horrors I found there.

Concerning my father, until the past decade he had little interest in my career.  (My mother wanted me to be a classics professor, so she never had any interest either.)  Neither went to any of my graduations my entire life.  I adapted to that very early—and I was always extremely independent (genetics from my mother—which I have passed on, for better and for worse, to my daughter).  So, their lack of interest never bothered me—I have always been my own best and worst judge.  Anyway, during the past decade, my father not only apologized to me for his lack of interest, but has told me he is very impressed/proud of what I have done in life, and certainly sees it as very unusual.  (Of course, when you are paying college tuition when you are in your 20’s—and it’s not for yourself, but for your kids, I suppose that is unusual!)   So, that’s a long (and partial) explanation as to why my father enjoyed the play and why he wanted others to read it.

Thanks so much for the read and all the thought that went into it,

Richard

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