Insight-oriented psychotherapy excels at exploring patients’ inner subjective lives. It offers fewer tools, however, for steering patients toward what’s being omitted from the concepts and thoughts that guide their interactions with the world.
And there are times when what needs to be discussed is exactly what is not being thought—for instance, the potential consequences or ethical implications of patients’ contemplated actions, or certain facts in patients’ social worlds that they ignore or simply don’t observe. In this four-session “book club,” we’ll read two plays and two novels, using each as an extended case study to explore non-punitive and non-directive ways therapists can help patients think from broader perspectives.
Antigone, by Sophocles
Creon is crowned king of Thebes after years of watching from the sidelines as the city breaks down. His first official decree falls with blunt force on his own niece—with disastrous consequences for his entire family. How could a therapist have helped him pause and foresee the likely ramifications of his actions?
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
In Gilded Age New York, a young man on the verge of marriage fancies himself progressive and enlightened—infinitely more savvy than the women around him. How could a therapist help him consider that these women might know much more than he suspects and are presenting only the female image he wants to believe in?
The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
In the anti-bellum South, two slaves find a path to freedom—but eventually choose to stay on the plantation, helping other slaves to escape. How do therapists help patients weigh their individual needs against their altruistic urge to sacrifice for others—especially when that sacrifice involves substantial risk?
As You Like It, by William Shakespeare
Brother betrays brother, uncle banishes niece: Dangerous court intrigue sends people into political exile. How can a therapist help traumatized and alienated patients balance the need for cautious self-preservation against the possibilities for learning when and how to trust?
Richard Smith, Ph.D. began life as an English major, and after college worked for twelve years in publishing before he retooled as a psychologist. He has a private practice in Washington, D.C. doing individual and couple therapy and clinical consultation. His first book, Not a Soul But Us (Bauhan Publishing, 2022), is a novel-in-sonnets about the plague pandemic in mid-14th-century England. An excerpt from his next book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, will appear in the spring 2025 issue of The Hudson Review.
Each meeting will include an hour of presentation by Richard Smith, followed by an hour of small-group discussion about clinical implications of the material—including how we might intervene if these characters were our patients.
The course will meet from 7 to 9 p.m. on four Tuesdays—March 11, May 6, September 30, and November 18, 2025. We will plan to meet online via Zoom.
Tuition is $240 for the four-session course, with 8 CEUs awarded.
Please contact Megan Flood at meganfloodlicsw@yahoo.com, for more information or to register. We look forward to seeing you.