“To know thyself,” Socrates said, “is the beginning of wisdom.”
James Atlas, the literary biographer who died recently at age 70, struggled to write some definitive biographies and bemoaned the length of time that he required to accomplish the task.
He asked: How can a person come to know someone else? It is possible, Atlas concludes, only once you know yourself. After his biographies, he wrote his acclaimed memoir, The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale.
In my opinion, there is no better way to know yourself than to make an honest confession to the blank page. I have written a memoir, and the fact is, it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. The task has been accomplished: I know myself in a deeper way.
I encourage my patients/clients to write, write, write. Writing is a form of self-therapy and can add to the richness of the relationship between client and psychotherapist. And best of all, the blank page is available to whomever wants it 24 hours a day at no cost.
