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Galit Atlas is a renowned psychoanalyst. She’s on the faculty of the New York University postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. And she teaches at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
I was a big fan of her last book, Emotional Inheritance. But I’m maybe even a bigger fan of her new book, which is called, Come Closer: Childhood Wounds, Adult Love, and the Secrets of Emotional Intimacy.
Reading it feels like you’re sitting inside the therapy room with Galit. You meet several of her patients. And you go on a journey with them as they try to figure out:
why they’re struggling in certain ways with emotional intimacy
why they seem to keep repeating the same patterns in their lives without awareness
and why their relationships don’t feel quite satisfying enough
Through this work with her patients, Galit has identified six archetypes. She says that every adult carries one of these archetypes with them, and that usually we carry more than one.
The archetypes—which we’re going to cover with Galit today—are:
the frightened child
the melancholic child
the ashamed child
the invisible child
the guilty child
and the chosen child
I identify big time with the guilty child. But there’s so much that Galit shares that really resonates, and helps to reframe how we approach intimacy and think about our relationships today.
I’m curious to know what hits for you—leave a comment after you listen!
MORE FROM GALIT ATLAS, PhD:
Galit’s Last Book: Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and a Legacy of Trauma
Galit’s first episode on Pulling the Thread: “Understanding Emotional Inheritance”
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
ELISE:
All right, so therapists are chosen children. I mean, I think you have that line in your book about Winnecott.
GALIT:
“It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster to not be found.”
ELISE:
Exactly. That need. Yeah.
GALIT:
We love it.
ELISE:
Yeah. And Chosen Child is the last archetype in the book, which I thought was interesting because as I read the book and went through every archetype, I was like, "Is this me? Is this me?" And there were elements. I'm the guilty child. You the guilty child. I'm the guilty child big time. Of course. Even though I don't have the same behaviors as Marco, the patient who you profile, that's not what I do. But when I was reading it, I was like, "Oh God, buckle your seatbelt."