Art and Mental Health Interview with Sara London
Author of The Performance Therapist and Authentic Therapeutic Identity
Today we have an interview with Sara London of Sara London's Psychoanalytic Showcase. And it’s a special day to share this interview because today is not only Sara’s 29th birthday but also the release day for her brand new book. CONGRATS SARA!
From Sara’s About page:
“Sara earned her master's degree from NYU's Gallatin School in an individualized study program focused on psychoanalysis and performance art. She’s the former President of the Board of Directors of Greater New York Mensa – the youngest ever president and first female in 20 years. And her book, “The Performing Therapist and Authentic Therapeutic Identity: Coming Into Being,” is arriving on August 14th, 2023, thanks to the efforts of Routledge Therapy.”
What would you like to share, if anything, about your own mental health journey?
I’m not sure how much of a mental health journey I have, but I certainly have a journey of emotional development. Like any Semite who loves Portnoy’s Complaint and my beloved Jewish science, I’m more of a fun and flirty neurotic than a card-carrying mentally ill person. I mean, I decided to be a writer of all things, so of course I have a little Hunter S. Thompson in me. But what I will say is that if I hadn’t entered into analysis, I think I would be a lot worse off. It’s helped me learn how to tolerate uncertainty, build trust, and a bunch of other stuff you could probably put on a Hallmark card.
How would you describe your creative/writing journey in life?
Since the moment my grubby little child fingers could hold a pen, I’ve been writing wacky stories and maudlin poetry. I discovered that writing was something I was supposed to be doing with my life in high school. But I tried repressing the idea in the hopes that I’d grow out of the whole ‘artist’ thing and suddenly become interested in stocks or data or something more lucrative (as one does). You can see how well that worked out.
I graduated with my Master’s degree in May of 2020, meaning that I spent a long, cruel summer and fall shooting out job applications to hundreds of prospective employers. In November of that year, I decided I’d try my luck at freelance writing, the only marketable skill I felt I had. And when my book proposal was accepted by Routledge, it felt like a sign that I could finally write books for a living. First comes ‘author,’ then, ideally, comes ‘novelist.’
I’m excited to talk about your new book in a moment. But first, what might you tell us about your novel in progress? (You had me at the description: Lolita meets Yalom)
I’m so glad you asked! I won’t spoil the title, but it’s somewhere in the realm of a romantic, psychological horror story written from a psychoanalytic perspective. It centers around two main characters: a 19-year-old college freshman and a 45-year-old clinical psychologist, as they use their fraught relationship to discover their own identities, intra-psychic conflicts, and perceptions on love. In my query, I mention how it “mixes erudite, eloquent philosophical meditations with authentic, funny, contemporary dialogue and scenarios,” but in a much less pretentious way, it takes itself both way too seriously and not seriously enough. There’s all kinds of Winnicottian, Jungian, and straight-up Freudian themes – I’ve been working on it on and off since I was fifteen, and I’m proud to say it’s truly my life’s work. It’ll be the next one to hit the shelves. Bet on it.
And let’s talk about your Masters program ... what led you to choose it? What did you love about it? Was there anything that didn't feel like a good fit about it?
I didn’t want to go to graduate school, but my parents wanted me to. And when my grandfather passed away in 2017, he left money specifically to fund the education of his grandchildren, meaning that I really had no excuse to say ‘no.’ So Gallatin was a compromise. I didn’t have to take any standardized test to get in, I could make my own program from scratch, and there were almost no core curriculum courses. For a person who hates school, this couldn’t have been a better fit. The only part that was a bad fit is that I really dislike the bureaucracy of academia and how pretentious it can be, but that’s nothing personal against my alma mater – again, I really think I wouldn’t have been able to endure the entirety of the program at any other school.
How would you describe your career as it relates to that degree?
The bulk of my degree had to do with writing and research – reading comprehension and interviewing – so in a way, my ability to write blog posts and articles for clients was directly influenced by the skills I built there. Also, in a straightforward sense, I studied psychology, which makes writing about psychology quite a bit easier. But on a deeper level, I think having read so much about human nature has granted me a deeper understanding about what people want to see and how people think. I think psychoanalytic theory is applicable to everyone, even analyses of societal patterns at large – in terms of Dungeons & Dragons, it allows you to subclass as a sociologist if you want to.
I can relate to a lot of that. I dropped out of high school due in large part to undiagnosed, untreated depression but also because I disliked “the system”. I started college for elementary education (irony!) but dropped out a semester later. I went back again and finished my bachelors in 2.5 years in a mostly-online program when that was a very rare thing. My degree is in Public Agency Service but what I really got out of it was those reading and writing skills, especially online writing when it was first emerging as a career option. It’s definitely where I got my start. Later, of course, I went on to get a Masters in Psychological Studies. I actually really like school although the bureaucracy around it can certainly be distracting.
Have you explored other approaches to therapy and what makes psychodynamic approaches work well for you?
I started with my analyst at once a week, then we gradually increased to twice, three times, and now, four times a week. My other experience with personal therapy is relatively scant – I interviewed a few therapists before I chose the one I have now. For me, psychodynamic approaches encourage the perpetual growth of features that I already feel are integral to my personality, such as curiosity, humor, and insight. I hate homework to begin with; if some therapist gave me a handout with a bunch of platitudes on it, I’d return it to them with edits in a red pen.
It’s interesting because in my own degree program, there was a heavy emphasis in non-psychodynamic modalities including art therapy, somatic therapy, drama therapy. So in my mind, psychoanalysis is THE TALK THERAPY and not considered the most creative. Although of course it can be and that’s definitely an oversimplification. So I love seeing your perspective on it.
What, for you, is one of the most interesting psychodynamic theories that relates to creativity?
It’s really hard to pick one! I’m a Winnicott girlie, so of course, I’ve got to go with the Squiggle Game. It was this thing he did with children where they would draw a squiggle on a piece of paper then turn it into a picture of something. You’re essentially taking this thing that’s completely nebulous, something that communicates a feeling or an unconscious idea, and then giving it life with your conscious mind. I love that shit. When I write fiction, I essentially play the Squiggle Game by starting with some nearly meaningless, stream-of-consciousness lines of dialogue and then connecting them with actions, descriptions, and settings. The dialogue gets cleaned up, of course, and I think about what I really wanted to say. But it all kind of starts a little… imprecisely. In ways that are almost impossible to explain. Like when I dig a Jeopardy! answer out from some deep-seated implicit memory. Why did I know the word ‘culottes’? I don’t think I’ll ever know!
Oh I love that - The Squiggle Game!
Let’s move into talking about your book … What does it mean to be a "performance therapist?" What are the big questions you try to answer about that in your book?
Being a performance therapist is about recognizing that there are ways in which someone can ‘act like’ a therapist while also staying true to the authentic selves that exist in their internal lives. As a performance artist can integrate ideas – political ideas, social or cultural ideas – and then regurgitate them using their bodies as the canvas, so too can therapists take in the stimuli of their patients and then regurgitate them using themselves as the tool for insight. And the biggest question I try to answer in my book is: how do we help therapists – new therapists or therapists struggling with their identities – feel like therapists?
What inspired you to write your book? What were the hardest and most rewarding parts of writing it? In what ways did your own mental health/ emotions show up throughout the writing process?
My emotions and intrapsychic life are inextricably tied to the book, as I wrote it using the very theories I would also use to explore my own mind. Like a work of fiction, I’m everywhere and nowhere in it. I think the obsession with performance and authenticity has always been there; it’s baked into the cake of who I am. That Freud quote comes to mind; ‘a man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion – in Schiller’s words, a tyrant.’
The hardest part of writing was synthesizing the research – whereas people in graduate school get a cohort to bat ideas around with, I didn’t necessarily have that built-in luxury, and to this day I’m a little self-conscious about the gaps in my knowledge base. Additionally, when I over-write, I go a little insane and become inconsolably schizoid. I should get a mug that says, ‘don’t talk to me if I’ve written more than 10,000 words in a week, because the inside of my head sounds like the deep-house bassline of a Rüfüs du Sol song’ (which I did about a month before my manuscript deadline). But when I got the hardcovers in the mail, and flipped through them – just knowing I did all that reading, all that time, all that effort, all that brainpower – is completely indescribable. It’s so far beyond rewarding. It’s a dream I’ve chased my entire life. And through only my sheer determination did I make it a reality.
From your lens, how does the visibility of being a therapist today (on Tik Tok, with a newsletter, whatever it may be) affect the therapist's own mental health as well as the therapeutic relationship?
Oof! I think therapist mental health is probably just as problematic these days as the mental health of the general public. Therapists who don’t want to have an online presence feel obligated to do so, lest they are unable to compete with other clinicians also desperate to fill their practices through whatever means necessary. Even for established therapists, you’re still trying to break into this weird new world moving just a little too fast for your liking. You’re a public face and a private face now, and you might have clients following you on Twitter or Instagram who see a side of you that’s more like a publicist, hocking your wares and sundries and trying not to get canceled. That can be hell for anyone.
I really have a lot of empathy for therapists who feel like they have to be little entrepreneurs when they want to hang up a shingle and make their own private practice. I think that’s why I’m so into the idea of cultivating authentic therapeutic identity – I think that once you know what you’re ‘selling,’ so to speak, it’ll take away a lot of the confusion and discomfort of engaging with the world as it is.
Having shared all of that, what is something we might be surprised to learn about you?
Here’s a few: the only tattoos I have are on my hands, I love opera, and I modeled for art classes in graduate school.
Fun stuff! Congrats again on your book and a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARA!
Get Sara’s Book on Amazon or see where else carries it
And make sure to check out the interview Sara did of me recently as part of The Artist’s Mind virtual book tour:
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Happy belated birthday, Sara! So much energy and wit comes through this great interview.
going to keep mulling this: "there was a heavy emphasis in non-psychodynamic modalities including art therapy, somatic therapy, drama therapy. So in my mind, psychoanalysis is THE TALK THERAPY and not considered the most creative" (along with your ideas in another post, about how doing things with the hands is healing)