Psychobook: Games, Tests, Questionnaires, Histories - Julian Rothenstein (2016)
Chapter 5. Writers Imagine Questionnaires
Writers Imagine Questionnaires
The United States Declaration of Independence famously states that it is a truth self-evident that “the pursuit of happiness” is “an inalienable right.” But how do you measure personal fulfillment? All over the world there are thousands upon thousands who, seeking that elusive state of perfect contentment, go to shrinks, therapists, and counselors of all persuasions, employ personal trainers, sit at the feet of mystical gurus, turn to religion, or listen, rapt, to meditation teachers on CDs and DVDs. Getting people to feel fulfilled is a highly profitable business.
Contentment is such a valuable commodity that we feel we ought to be able to measure it. There are so many variables—heredity and temperament, circumstances, the will to be happy, and so on—that no method has been able to do more than arrive at a vague approximation. In fact, most people most of the time, it seems, think themselves reasonably happy. Research indicates that if you ask people, anywhere in the world, and of all types and condition, to rate their happiness out of ten, the answer will be seven. For this part of the book, we have asked writers who are not psychologists to invent tests and questionnaires that might provide some new ideas about everyone’s search for that elusive condition: contentment.
A psychoanalyst listens to a patient digging into her past at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute Treatment Center in New York City, 1956
The CB Identity Questionnaire (CBIQ)
By Charles Boyle
Your response to the questions should take the form of a, b, or c.
1. a) You identify with this statement, absolutely.
2. b) This statement does apply to you, but only in part or sometimes.
3. c) You don’t recognize yourself in this statement.
If I had a different name, I would be a different person.
I like dressing up in clothes I wouldn’t normally wear.
I remember almost nothing of my childhood.
I think certain people are taller than me, even though in fact they’re not.
When I’m in company with other people, I find myself copying their mannerisms or habits of speech.
I often imagine being someone of the opposite gender.
I enjoy throwing things away.
Sometimes I feel I’ve been hacked into by someone else.
I see myself as a river, not a tree.
In most arguments, I can see right on both sides.
I often change my mind.
I’m happy to take psychotropic drugs.
When I hear someone in the street shouting, “Stop, thief!” I think it’s me they’re after.
Tracing adult behavior to childhood trauma is missing the point.
In films and books, I’m hopeless at following plots; I get distracted by the scenery.
I deal with fear and pain by imagining that I’m someone who feels no fear or pain.
When I answer psychological questionnaires, I tick the boxes that don’t apply to me.
Mostly a, b, or c? To discover what your results signify, turn to page 185.
Six Types of Reading for a Better Kind of Life
By Robert McCrum
Romance: Lunatics, Lovers and Poets
--
Which book or poem would you most like to read in bed?
Name the English word you find most sensuous.
What’s your favorite novel?
Which book might you use for a seduction, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford or Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert?
Would you rather have a date with Oscar Wilde (The Ballad of Reading Gaol) or Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)?
Work: A Hard Day’s Night
--
Would you prefer to read:
· Christopher Marlowe or William Shakespeare?
· Emily Dickinson or Virginia Woolf?
· P. G. Wodehouse or Henry James?
· Walt Whitman or T. S. Eliot?
· Ian Fleming or John Le Carré?
Identity: Who Goes There?
--
Would you prefer to be “Anonymous” or to use a pseudonym?
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, do you identify with Laertes or Horatio?
Would you rather meet William Thackeray’s Becky Sharp or Emily Brontë’s Cathy Heathcliff?
Which writers make you cry?
Do you prefer your writing paper to be lined or plain?
Which member of the crew of the Pequod in Moby Dick would you be?
Would you rather be a minor character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure?
Solitude: No Man Is an Island
--
Would you prefer:
· to read a stage play or a novel?
· the seaside or the country?
· to perform as Bottom or Coriolanus?
· to play Prospero or Lear?
· to be Mr. Darcy or Robinson Crusoe?
· to parody a page of Dracula or one from On the Road?
When you reread Catcher in the Rye, do you
1. a) regret your teenage years?
2. b) turn to a long work of horticultural history?
3. c) think that J. D. Salinger is a weirdo?
4. d) book a flight to Manhattan?
Abroad: A Peak in Darien
--
What’s your favorite travel book?
Whose house, abroad, would you most like to visit?
Would you prefer to stay with Somerset Maugham in Villa Mauresque or with Winston Churchill at Chequers?
Choose between A Passage to India by E. M. Forster and Kim by Rudyard Kipling.
Choose between Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul.
Would you rather have a drink with Ernest Hemingway in Key West or an evening with Jack Kerouac in Greenwich Village?
Choose between Roughing It by Mark Twain and The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Ill Health: For Whom the Bell Tolls
--
Would you prefer to be treated by W. Somerset Maugham or Arthur Conan Doyle?
Would you prefer to have been D. H. Lawrence or John Keats?
When you’re under the weather, do you take comfort in a favorite novel or thrillers?
Choose between Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Would you choose to be visited in hospital by Hilary Mantel or Margaret Atwood?
Would you want your last conversation to be with Clive James or Christopher Hitchens?
Would you like to be read to by Stephen King or Anne Tyler?
Dr. Alfred Kinsey interviewing a mother, USA, ca. 1955
Everyday Guilt Test (EGT)
By Kate Pullinger
This test, to be done in the morning, will help you and/or your subject determine the impact that guilt has on everyday life.
When you get up in the morning do you:
--
1. a) wish you had gotten up earlier?
2. b) wish you had slept better?
3. c) wish you didn’t have to get up at all?
4. d) simply get up and get on with the day?
While you eat your breakfast do you:
--
1. a) feel bad about the fact that all you eat in the morning is sugar?
2. b) shout at the radio then worry about who has heard you?
3. c) plan the rest of the day’s meals carefully in order to achieve a balanced diet, then remember those plans later after you’ve eaten?
4. d) complete yesterday’s newspaper crossword while humming your favorite tune?
When you pick up your phone and discover eight new messages from your least favorite parent/work colleague/classmate do you:
--
1. a) delete the messages without reading them?
2. b) wish that person had never been born, then regret that wish?
3. c) tell yourself you’ll deal with this problem later?
4. d) answer all the messages while remaining calm?
When you get in your car in order to drive to work/school/the bar do you:
--
1. a) look at your bicycle and wonder why you thought buying it would mean you would ride it?
2. b) remember that promise you made last night to give
your neighbor a lift but drive off without him or her anyway?
3. c) think about how car emissions are destroying the world and how you are powerless to do anything about it?
4. d) pop on the radio to your favorite hits station and groove your way through town?
Score 4 for option a, 3 for b, 2 for c, and 1 for d. Then total your scores and turn to page 185 to determine your guilt level.
The Sex Questionnaire
By Neil Bartlett
There are twenty-five questions in this questionnaire, but you don’t have to answer them all—just the ones you fancy. They are all about sex.
PART ONE: Questions About You
1) Would you say you are generally frank about sex while you are doing it, or when you are talking about it, or both?
2) Would you like to be more frank?
3) Which would you say has had the most influence on you: your best sexual experience, or your worst sexual experience? What was that?
4) What’s the biggest problem you have with sex these days? Would you say this is your problem, or a problem caused by society in general?
5) Which of the following words or phrases best describes your sex life? (Circle the ones you’ve chosen.) unforeseen / uneventful / unnatural / unlovely / unconventional / unimaginative / unpaid / unbearable / unpredictable / unprincipled / unlikely / utterly wonderful / I don’t have a sex life
6) Alfred C. Kinsey insisted that his researchers never implied or suggested that they objected to any type of sexual behavior. If you had worked for him, what type or types of sexual behavior would you have had to admit that you do personally object to?
7) What are you most proud of in your sex life these days?
8) And what are you most ashamed of?
9) Would having better sex make you a better person?
10) Would being a feminist make you have better sex?
11) Is the whole idea of “better” sex a red herring? What word would you use?
12) When the future looks back at you, do you think it will categorize you as a pioneer, a typical example, an exception, a symptom, or a freak—or as something else entirely?
PART TWO: Questions About Us
13) According to the authors of the British 1994 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, “We have not yet moved into a culture which tolerates sexual variety.” Do you think that statement is still true of the country in which you live?
14) If you think it is still true, how many years do you think it will be before things move on? Can you suggest any specific action that might help bring that about?
15) If you think your country does now tolerate sexual variety, do you think that’s a good thing? Why or why not?
16) Continuing in this vein, please write a true statement which includes at least three of the following words or phrases: joy / share/ regret / shame / body bodies / hope / transgender / children these days / in the past / in the future more / fewer / too many / too few / all struggle / sex / women / homosexuals men / people / pleasure / never eventually / in my lifetime everyone
17) Whose job—if anyone’s—do you think it should be to teach people about sex?
18) Has anyone ever taught you anything useful about sex ? If so, can you say where and when and with whom that lesson took place?
19) Who would you like to pass what you learned on to?
20) A big question, but an important one: does pornography help?
21) In 1927 Bronislaw Malinowski wrote a book called Sex and Repression in Savage Society. If you were going to write a book about how sex works these days—or about how it doesn’t work these days—what title would you give it?
22) If you could change one thing about your identity, and visit one other place and time in order to have sex there, where would you time travel to, and as whom?
23) If you could change one thing about the way women have sex—or are allowed, assumed, forbidden, or encouraged to have sex these days—what would it be?
24) If you could change one thing about the way men have sex, what would it be?
25) And finally—and perhaps most importantly—if you could ask other people just one question of your own about sex, what would that question be?
These questions first appeared in Neil Bartlett’s artwork WOULD YOU MIND?, which was commissioned by the Wellcome Collection for its exhibition The Institute of Sexology in London in 2015. After the exhibition closed, every single one of 19,287 completed questionnaires was then archived in the Wellcome Library, where they are now fully available to future researchers into the history of sex.
The late Jane Coleridge, psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Photograph from the series Head Space: Photographs of Psychotherapeutic Environments, by Nick Cunard, 2003.
The “Matter in the Wrong Place” Test
By M. H. Yorke
Carl Jung believed that matter in the wrong place is dirt. “People get dirty through too much civilization,” he wrote. “Whenever we touch nature, we get clean.”
Select a response to each of the following scenarios as honestly as you can. Do not spend too much time considering them—often the first answer that comes to mind is the best one.
It is your main holiday of the year—a holiday that you badly need—and you are shown to your hotel room. Immediately, you are aware of a crowing rooster.
--
1. a) You welcome this sound for its refreshing rusticity.
2. b) You sense it may pose a problem.
3. c) You know it will pose a problem.
4. d) You ask the hotel’s proprietor if there’s anything that can be done about it.
You win first prize in a raffle and are to spend two weeks on a desert island attended by someone who scarcely speaks.
--
1. a) You think that fourteen days on your own with no talking is just what’s required.
2. b) You’re not entirely sure whether it’s such an interesting prospect.
3. c) You know you will be bored within hours.
4. d) The thought fills you with panic and dread.
You awake out of sorts. You knock over a glass, stub your toe in a place where you haven’t stubbed it before, and nearly cause a road accident on your way to work.
--
1. a) You say to yourself, I’m out of sync with the “matter” around me.
2. b) You have a vague sense of unease, a feeling that everything is conspiring against you.
3. c) You say to yourself that you must be tired and that it might be a good idea to have an early night tonight.
There is a horoscope in your magazine/periodical.
--
1. a) You practice delayed gratification, waiting until the page is reached before reading it.
2. b) Invariably, you identify with something in the text specific to your star sign.
3. c) As your eye wanders over the page, you can’t help thinking that other texts may have some relevance.
4. d) You pass over it without looking.
Your partner adopts the annoying habit of turning on the kettle most times they walk past it.
--
1. a) You practice “live and let live.”
2. b) You seek to practice “live and let live.”
3. c) You politely explain to your partner that there is little advantage in keeping water close to boiling point in this way.
4. d) You seek to impose a ban, to nip this insidious habit in the bud. It could well lead to other bad habits, after all.
You don’t get along with your neighbor. It’s an almost impossible situation.
--
1. a) You wonder whether the neighbor might be some sort of archetype, a manifestation of the collective unconscious.
2. b) You canvass other neighbors to test the water, thereby establishing how he or she is perceived by others in the vicinity.
3. c) You begin to keep a diary, carefully documenting incidents that at a later date may help you to press a case.
When you think of your own impending demise. You see it as:
--
1. a) a great adventure
2. b) a goal
3. c) a release
4. d) a sad finale
Score 1 for option a, 2 for b, 3 for c, and 4 for d. Then total your score and turn to page 185.
Donna Bassin, PhD, psychotherapist, photograph by psychiatrist Sebastian Zimmermann, New York, 2009
A Likely Story
By Will Eaves
The object of this exercise is not to attempt the task of defining probabilities, but to provide a way to assess the respondent’s perception of priorities and possibilities in his or her life.
Here are a number of statements in threes. Take a stab at ordering each group of three, and feel free to annotate your choices or express reservations. There is no right order. What will seem obvious or important or applicable to some may not be so to others, and it may be felt that a strong element of fanciful or magical thinking is involved in many of the statements.
The order of preference is the starting point for a discussion.
At Home
If I lived with excruciating pain, I would not be able to cope.
If I become ill, I still try to eat properly.
If I can just talk to someone, I ought to be fine.
If the house is clean, I feel better.
If the house is dirty sometimes, I do not think it matters.
If I see a mouse in the kitchen, I call pest control.
If my neighbor has a fall, it means extra responsibility for me.
If I have to do small repairs, I worry about bigger things.
If my partner had an affair, I could get over it in time.
If I am feeling low, I avoid official correspondence.
If I’m happy, I mind less about money and bills.
If there is an unexpected knock at the door, I freeze.
At Work
I can learn difficult things as long as they are explained properly.
My time is valuable even if I’m not paid for it.
It is too late for me to learn how to manipulate new technology.
When people in authority smile at me, it’s a rare but encouraging sign.
Salary negotiations go better if you’re physically attractive.
The powerful prefer people who will always be grateful to them.
Letters after a name are evidence of something, I suppose.
It’s important that I feel I’m doing a useful job.
I don’t personally agree with what’s happening, but I daren’t complain.
I have made important friends through my work.
I make mistakes, so I’m reluctant to judge others.
I do not see the point of trade unions.
At Large
A catastrophe grows more and more likely, so why recycle?
“Cultivate your garden” is a good rule of thumb.
I find it relaxing to think about outer space.
It pays to keep abreast of current affairs.
I vote out of habit rather than conviction.
If I get involved in local politics, I will end up on camera.
I am sorry for the poor but I think I deserve what I have.
My children are safer with me than at any other time.
It is okay to let the kids run wild once in a while.
Something will prevent the human race coming to an end.
It isn’t always nice to say what I really think about the future.
Accidents can involve people who are good drivers.
Dr. Brooks (Barry Sullivan) and Liza Elliott (Ginger Rogers) in the film Lady in the Dark, directed by Mitchell Leisen, 1944
The Shyness Questionnaire (TSQ)
By Charles Boyle
Choose option a or option b for each question. (In cases where you feel neither would be your ideal option, just go with the one that feels more appropriate.)
Would your rather spend a ten-day vacation at:
a) Las Vegas or
b) a meditation retreat?
The magician needs someone from the audience to help him with his next trick. Do you:
a) put up your hand or
b) stare down at your knees?
Are you someone who:
a) hasn’t blushed since you were eleven years old or b) blushes frequently?
You discover a new planet and get to name it. Do you name it after:
a) yourself or b) the family pet?
When talking with someone you find attractive, do you tell them:
a) they have beautiful eyes or
b) you like their name?
Just one slice of cake is left on the plate. To take it, do you need:
a) zero or b) three invitations?
When lost in the city and needing directions, do you:
a) ask the first person who comes along or b) buy a map?
In meetings, are you:
a) among the first to speak or
b) among the last?
If you were a writer, would you be:
a) a playwright or b) a novelist?
A cashier gives you change from a $10 bill, but you think you paid with a $20 bill. Do you:
a) make a scene or b) shrug and walk away?
T-shirts—do you prefer them:
a) with slogans or b) plain?
Is someone looking for you at a party most likely to find you:
a) singing karaoke or b) reading the spines of the books on the shelves?
When making love, do you prefer the lights:
a) on or b) off?
The line for security at the airport is a mile long. Do you:
a) cut to the front, claiming your flight leaves in ten minutes or
b) take your place at the back?
Would you apply for a job in:
a) the sales department or
b) the IT department?
Are you more likely to answer this questionnaire:
a) in company with others or
b) in private?
Note down how many a and how many b options you chose. Then turn to page 185.
Mark Epstein, MD, psychotherapist, photograph by psychiatrist Sebastian Zimmermann, New York, 2012
The psychiatrist and his patient. In early photographs, the patients are almost always women.
Questions from “Teaching Notes”
Below is a selection from questions devised by the American experimental artist Paul Thek for his students, circa 1980. They reflect his belief that creativity is deeply connected to every aspect of an artist’s personality, particularly those related to love, sex, and close personal relations, as well as the feeling for beauty. “Every human being,” said Joseph Beuys, “is an artist.” Introspection is a doorway to artistic creation.
What are your requirements in a friend? A lover? A mate?
What do you do on a date?
What is the purpose of dating?
Do you believe in premarital sex?
What is the main source of difficulty between you and your parents? Your teachers? Your friends?
Who are your role models?
Who is the person closest to you at the moment?
Who is the person physically closest to you at the moment?
What in your life is your greatest source of pleasure?
How do you know you love someone?
How do you know that someone is interested in you?
How do you know that you are happy? Sad? Nervous? Bored?
What would it be like if you behaved with absolute power?
What is the most beautiful thing in the world?
What is the purpose of art?
What does spiritual mean to you?
What is the most difficult thing in life for you?
What is the surest way to happiness?
What is attractive in a woman? A man?
Why are you here?
What do you think has been the greatest hurt, both mental and physical, that you have suffered?
What do you think are the qualities of a life fully lived?
What do you do to make yourself more attractive sexually? Why do you do this?
How Angry Are You?
By Patricia Duncker
All the domestic and professional incidents or scenarios described in this questionnaire are authentic.
1. Your TV satellite box has broken down repeatedly. You call the customer support line. They suggest that you go through the entire self-help repair procedure yet again. This method has not worked on three previous occasions. Do you:
--
1. a) swear violently at the support engineer and threaten her/him?
2. b) tell your wife/husband/partner/significant other to come downstairs and deal with it?
3. c) slam down the phone, rip the box free of its leads, and hurl it out of your living-room window?
2. Your neighbor's gigantic evergreen hedge is darkening your house and garden. He refuses to cut it back. Do you:
--
1. a) invite him over, point out your lack of light, and offer to pay half the costs of lowering the hedge?
2. b) hack it down yourself at dead of night and pile the cuttings up against his front door?
3. c) set fire to his entire garden?
3. You are a careful driver. You come to a halt in a line of traffic. The driver behind fails to stop and runs into the back of your car, causing substantial damage. Do you:
--
1. a) call the police and ask for the other driver’s insurance details?
2. b) burst into tears and splutter out the fact that it is your partner’s car, and that she or he will never forgive you?
3. c) stab the other driver?
4. You sense that you are being edged out at work. Your colleagues fall silent when you approach them, or deliberately change the subject of their discussions. Do you:
--
1. a) ask your union for advice and seek a meeting with senior management?
2. b) hack into their e-mails, discover the truth, confirm your suspicions, and then send them anonymous death threats?
3. c) hire the frighteners, and send them to your colleagues’ home addresses?
5. You come home unexpectedly and find your life partner in bed with someone you don’t know who is (i) of the same sex as your partner, (ii) of a different sex to you, or (iii) clearly well over twenty years younger than you and your partner. Do you:
--
1. a) close the door quietly and slip out of the house?
2. b) begin screaming and refuse to stop?
3. c) strip off all your clothes, leap into bed, and insist on having violent sex with both of them?
6. Your dangerous neighbor has strangled your cat, nailed its body eagle-spread to your door, and left you a message warning you to keep your animals off his land. Do you:
--
1. a) call the police and report the incident?
2. b) kill his cat with a well-placed poisoned rat?
3. c) hunt him down with a gun?
Note down your choices (1a, 2b, etc.), then turn to page 185.
Unknown film still, USA, ca. 1932
A psychologist and his patient, USA, ca. 1960
Dream Awareness Survey (DAS)
By Derek Linzey
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
—Carl Jung
How in touch are you with your nocturnal self?
Dreams can tell us much about our waking lives. Read the following dream summaries and choose the interpretation you feel is most likely (a, b, or c).
1. You dream you are soaring with ease over the countryside.
1. a) You are in danger of suffering from delusions of grandeur.
2. b) You should take up hang gliding.
3. c) Life is going well for you.
2. You dream that you are a student. In this dream, you discover you are unprepared for a test. This causes you great anxiety.
1. a) You should not pursue a teaching career.
2. b) You are worried about an ongoing or upcoming event or situation in your life.
3. c) You are nervous about the judgment of others.
3. In your dream, you discover that a sleeping bear is under your bed. You are terrified of waking the bear.
1. a) You are wary of awakening a powerful inner force.
2. b) You suffer from ursaphobia.
3. c) You have grievously neglected the housework and need to vacuum under the bed.
4. You are a man—in your dream you are wrestling with a woman.
1. a) You need to buy a bigger bed for you and your wife.
2. b) You must come to a better male/female balance within yourself.
3. c) You might consider a sex change.
5. You dream you are on the subway. You attempt to exit the train but are prevented from doing so.
1. a) Your life is out of your control.
2. b) You are uneasy about traveling to unfamiliar places.
3. c) You should commute by bike.
Now turn to page 186.
Digital Dependency Index (DDI)
By Derek Linzey
It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.
—John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, 1968
We live in an increasingly digital world. Just how dependent on your devices have you become? Take the following questionnaire—you might be surprised by what you discover.
If you are or were to become single, how do/would you meet other single people?
1. By striking up conversations in museum gift shops or at social gatherings.
2. By responding to ads in the dating section of newspapers.
3. By using an online dating service.
4. By using a location-based dating and social discovery application on your smartphone.
How do you navigate an unfamiliar part of town?
1. By relying on your husband/wife’s infallible sense of direction.
2. By consulting a paper map.
3. By using the GPS system in your car.
4. By using the map application on your smartphone.
What is your preferred method to communicate some personal news with friends and relatives?
1. In person over a cup of tea or a gin and tonic.
2. By letter writing.
3. By telephone.
4. By limiting yourself to 140 characters or posting to your Instagram.
How do you maintain or keep track of your fitness levels?
1. Through your biannual visits to the tailor.
2. By checking the bathroom scale.
3. By monitoring the number of steps you've taken on your device of choice.
4. By obeying your smartwatch’s command to stand up every hour.
In case of a fire in which order do you reach for the following? (Choose one.)
1. child, husband/wife, pet, phone
2. child, husband/wife, phone, pet
3. child, phone, husband/wife, pet
4. phone, child, husband/wife, pet
Now add up the numbers you have chosen to arrive at your DDS (Digital Dependence Score) and turn to page 186.
Ego Health Checkup (EHC)
By Derek Linzey
My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.
—V. S. Naipaul
A properly balanced ego is crucial to good mental health. To determine the health of your own ego answer the following questions (as honestly as you can).
When someone pays you a compliment do you:
1. nod and take it as just dues?
2. blush and accept the compliment?
3. look behind you to spot the person for whom (surely) the compliment is intended?
4. scrutinize the complimenter for ulterior motives?
When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
1. The man/woman of your dreams.
2. A flawed but attractively human face.
3. A fat, hairy stranger.
4. Mirrors have been banished from your house.
What is your attitude toward clothes?
1. You live in naturist community—clothes only hide the glory of your body.
2. Clothes are important to you—they are a considered outward representation of your inner self.
3. You feel comfortable in whatever you wear.
4. Clothes protect the world from the hideousness of your naked form.
In the changing rooms at the pool do you:
1. shower naked whilst conducting an involved routine of stretches?
2. shower naked but quickly?
3. shower with your bathing suit on?
4. skip the shower altogether and quickly dress in one of the private stalls?
When a friend returns the first draft of your manuscript with many considered comments do you:
1. ignore all input, as genius is destined to be misunderstood?
2. consider these comments carefully and incorporate the salient ones into your next draft?
3. not share your writing, as the mere act of writing is pleasure enough for you?
4. give up and never write again?
Note down the number of your responses to each question and add the numbers together, then turn to page 186.
Tina Mackenzie, psychotherapist. Photograph from the series Head Space: Photographs of Psychotherapeutic Environments, by Nick Cunard, 2003.