I first entered individual therapy in the late 1980s, in Manhattan. Once a week for six years I strolled happily northward up Columbus Avenue from my apartment to my therapist’s office in the West 90s. Our sessions were a high point of my week. And why not? I got 50 minutes of undivided attention from a smart, empathetic professional, there to help me find out who I was and to address the old malaise that brought me to her door. “Narcissistic injury,” I learned to call it.
