Schopenhauer's Porcupines

Luepnitz tells five stories of patients she has worked with in therapy. All are resounding successes, though all come from wildly different backgrounds. Luepnitz is a traditional Freudian therapist and that bothered me at first. But as I read on, I could see Luepnitz seems to use traditional Freudian techniques to read a patient, much like I read the characters in a book. It was a fascinating read, watching as patients became more and more forthcoming with their problems and difficulties. Do all people, even the most psychologically healthy, have secrets? How is it that some people deal with the world despite their secrets and others fail to do so? What do therapists do to help patients become healthier? How can these techniques be brought into common usage in all relationships? These were questions I thought about as I read.

Schopenhauer tells the story of porcupines and their need for warmth as a metaphor for people and their need for love. Porcupines are cold and approach other porcupines for warmth. As the porcupine gets closer and closer, he gets warmer and warmer, but it also becomes more and more painful for the porcupines and the porcupines began to move apart. Some porcupines, Schopenhauer notes, have so much internal warmth that they have little need for other porcupines.