Today I talked to Charlotte Fox Weber about her book Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires (Atria Book, 2023).
What we often want most is what we shouldn’t want or at least don’t dare admit to wanting. That’s but one point Charlotte Fox Weber is keen on exploring. Aren’t we always (especially in therapy, perhaps) like little kids still, playing games of (emotional) hide-and-seek? We long for attention, for ego gratification but also know it’s not “polite” to admit as much. This episode touches on a variety of topics, from a client named Alice who longs for the “darkness” that she finds more real than health, to at the end an exploration of Prince Harry’s travails with the Royal Family. In between, the episode touches on Weber’s favorite term from the book’s glossary: Sufferiority, a sense of pride and exceptionalism mixed with feelings of shame and inadequacy. Few guests are as free-form and intriguing as this one.
Charlotte Fox Weber is a psychotherapist and writer. She cofounded Examined Life and was the founding head of the School of Life Psychotherapy. She grew up in Connecticut and Paris and now lives in London with her husband and two young children.
Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His latest two books are Blah Blah Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo and Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals.
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