Napoli to Positano

This was written a few days ago, but with the storm, and Halloween .....

But here is the next installment of the trip, as I recall:

Napoli to Positano

 

I am not a good follower, nor am I a great joiner.  So my wife and I don’t take tours.  We map out where we want to go, try to learn about the place and head out to see it and enjoy it.  It is for that reason that after our plane landed in Napoli, we rented a Fiat 500 and headed out, on our own, to Positano.  I encourage you all to Google that route on Google Maps.

 

But, that route would only look like a twisting road, first highway, then through several tunnels and then along the twisting road on the cliffs high over the sea.  A road that makes Highway 1 South of Carmel seem wide and straight. 

 

But that is not the fun part.  The real fun came when we missed the exit to the road to Sorrento, went too far on the A3, and got off the highway.  Then you realize that the smaller cities of Southern Italy do not believe in stop signs or traffic lights.  Nor are the entrances to highways anywhere near the exits, and signs are also nonexistent.  To add to that the roads were built by the Romans, or earlier.  They consist of a narrow lane in each direction, heading right through town.  Two Dodge Dakotas could not pass each other going in opposite directions.

 

What you get is a constant flow of inter weaving traffic, either going about fifteen to twenty miles an hour, or not going at all. Then you need to factor in the motor scooters.  There are about ten motor scooters to each car.  They go at about  twenty seven mph. They weave around all the cars, in both lanes, going in all directions,  both with and against the traffic, wherever  there is six inches  of space.  But they take care of themselves.  It’s the predestrians you have to pay attention to.  They cross the street whenever, where ever they want, or else they just walk in the street, because the sidewalks are full of chairs and people sitting, drinking and arguing.  And in the traffic, everyone is yelling at each other.

 

My lovely wife could not bear to look, but it was fun.  It was like living in a video game; just keep moving.  If you stop, and let someone in, you will never get a chance again.  First gear, second gear; first gear, second gear – just keep going.

 

But, as we drove the narrow city roads, or the winding mountain roads, on which you could not see beyond the next curve, which was never more than forty yards ahead., I never saw even the slightest scrape or dent or injury.  Buses missed me by one to six inches,  Motorcycles  that were coming head-on,  would disappear  seconds before impact like ghosts behind the mirror.  After a while I had complete faith that everything would be fine, and it was.

 

After we reached Positano, and I sat in the lounge of the Hotel de Franco, at the top of the hill, looking about 700 feet straight down to the beaches and the sea on either side, I thought a bit about how this was part of the current difficulties being felt by psychotherapists, especially those with Ph. Ds.

 

It is usually in the character of good therapists to be compassionate, understanding and empathetic.  We see and feel the trouble in others. We want to solve problems, to look at them,  take them apart, and then help put things together  in a way that works better.  We do not usually push ahead and claim every small space to be ours and then grab at the next one and the next, taking what we can for ourselves, regardless of the effect it has on others. 

If we did, others would have to worry about themselves.  But no, our job is to worry about them, and to help them make things better for themselves.

 

But what we are learning now, and many of us figured out before, but many have not, is that if you want to be in your own practice, you have to learn the business part.  They don’t teach the business part in any graduate school.  You may learn therapeutic techniques, you may learn research skills, but you don’t learn marketing, and you don’t learn finance.

 

We also thought we were entering a profession, like a doctor or a lawyer, and that being a “professional” means that patients would just come to us.  But that is not the case for any professional any more, unless you are Miguel Cabrera or Tom Brady.

 

Also, what you may not realize is that some of patients you see, who could be diagnosed as bipolar, or narcissist personality, are often the ones whose business plans just did not work.  There are other people, perhaps people such as Rupert Murdock, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Ralph Nader, even Madonna, who may have ended up being labeled with some kind of psychiatric diagnosis except that they pushed very hard, had unrealistic goals, moved people out of the way, and did not think about others as much as they took care of themselves.  They are regarded as very successful.

 

But so many therapists worry about confidentiality, about the possible impact of everything they might say, of what someone might think about what they are thinking.  And all of this may be important, at times, in the therapeutic process.   But it can leave you powerless in the business process, and it has in many ways, allowed the profession to become marginalized.

 

We think about ethics, and liability and therapeutic impact, and confidentiality, and some clown is out there, whose best qualifications are a good haircut and a big set of brass balls.  He markets himself as an executive coach, and charges $700 an hour to help the boss work out a strategy.  And then there is the Naked Therapist who got highlighted on Fox News.

 

We find that, if we want to be part of the mainstream process of bringing psychological services to those who need them, that the decisions about how, where, and how much we will get paid are going to be made a great distance from our offices.   Many of us will have to learn how to join groups (ACOs? roving bands of Psychologists?)  and work well with others, which is something I said at the outset that I don’t do well, Or some of us will take the position that we will only see patients who can pay us what we want, or we will only perform a service that gets us compensated in the manner we expect, but that means we have to find a market, and we have to learn how to sell ourselves.

 

You have to learn to constantly push ahead, just like driving though Napoli.  Keep your eye on the opening and go for it, and let the other guy take care of himself.   And sometimes you have to scream and use hand gestures.