Lifestyle
Why I rejected the “neutral” aesthetics of therapy rooms
You’ve (finally) made an appointment with a therapist. Just getting the appointment took some legwork. This is an in-person appointment, so you walk from the nearest metro station, or step out of the ride share, or park your car. If you’re really fortunate, you were able to walk there. You arrive to the therapist’s office, perhaps anxious, flustered, maybe numb.
What do you see when you walk in?
You might enter a lobby. It might be windowless. Neutral carpeting, overhead lighting. There might be a bank of small buttons on the wall, and with one press, the button signals to the therapist in the room that you’ve arrived. That’s old school, though. You might enter an old apartment building that’s been rezoned for offices with no waiting room to speak of. Or you might enter directly from the street into an office, without the pacifying liminal space of a waiting room.
As a client of therapists in Los Angeles (one Jungian analyst in a big Westside office building, another in a home office in my neighborhood — and yes, I got to walk there), and as a therapist myself, I’m often thinking about The Room. The fantasy of the contemporary therapy room is often based on images planted by pop culture: The dark wood paneling and furniture of Dr. Melfi’s office in “The Sopranos” comes to mind, or the most recent season of the L.A.-based home office of “In Treatment,” with its distinctive view of the city and its well-appointed and colorful interior. Between just these two shows, one can see how the therapy space and how we perceive it is subtly changing.
I am not a “neutral” therapist, and so my self-designed therapy room is not a neutral, or beige, space.
The first office where I sought therapy was in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. I took an elevator and approached a door with frosted glass. The building was historical and aptly named the Security Building. I was in my early 20s. It was in that office where I began untangling some of my own history, much of which would later appear in my first book. My weekly processing of the past eventually migrated to another building when my therapist moved her practice to a house rezoned for offices in a residential neighborhood. Both locations served as a particular kind of refuge, places where I came to new understandings and occasional epiphanies. In each office, I sat across from my counselor on a couch, held in a space that she created.
“If the unconscious is structured like a language, the design of a therapist’s consulting room is also a language,” Deborah Levy writes in a recent Granta essay. As a writer/therapist, I can appreciate this — including when Levy later notes that therapy rooms are “often beige” and that even if the “room’s mood attempts to be entirely neutral, someone has art-directed its blandness.” When I think of the various therapy rooms I worked in as an associate therapist in a busy community clinic, I recall the attention to having a somewhat blank canvas across many rooms, that each could be outfitted with donated furniture, random books and an occasional piece of art. If you’ve been in therapy for as many years as I have, you probably recognize this blandness.
Up until the 1980s, there was not as much attention given to the decor of the room where patients/clients met. In the U.S. in the early ’90s, elements such as windows, plants and even aquariums were considered choices that might serve as symbolic material for the client. And with the easing of the concept of the therapist as “a blank slate,” shifts have continued to occur in therapy room decor. Where there was once an insistence on an impersonal space, there is now an acknowledgment that the therapist does not have to cloak their identity in a benign anonymity.
I am not a “neutral” therapist, and so my self-designed therapy room is not a neutral, or beige, space. In 2021, more than a year after I had stopped seeing clients in person in rented offices due to the pandemic, I had the opportunity to furnish and decorate my own home office. I thought about how best to create a container — a place where someone would cross the threshold and feel. Therapy can obviously generate loads of feelings, but the best container allows the client to feel it all, in a safe, comfortable environment.
In an episode of “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” O’Brien, dressed as Freud in a wig, fake beard and suit, visits the Freud Museum in Austria. O’Brien, gamely holding a cigar, introduces the museum director, who begins by noting that Freud’s office couch is actually housed in London. Upon hearing this, O’Brien abruptly leaves the room. Since The Couch is not in the Freud Museum, O’Brien returns to the room and does a whole bit using a blow-up mattress.
When I was buying a couch for my own therapy office, I did not think of The Couch. I did, however, think about the various therapy offices I’ve sat or reclined in. There was crying, complaining, dissociating and even laughing on those couches. No particular couch sticks in my memory, so perhaps these were neutral couches awaiting my emotions to spill out over them. When I try to remember sitting across from my therapists in their respective offices, I do remember whether there was carpet or wood floor under my feet, what the bookshelves in the room offered, and whether or not the lighting was natural, lamps or overhead.
Before I designed my own office space, I met my most recent therapist in a room of her home. The bookshelves in the room were a rich mix of cookbooks and psychology books. Occasionally my therapist would have a delicious-smelling soup on simmer in another part of the house — not a design choice, but a pleasant sensory experience in the background. When the pandemic forced us to meet outdoors, her back patio, with its tiled floor, pergola and garden became the room (albeit one with occasional mosquitoes).
My therapy office is a 350-square-foot ADU behind my home. When a client enters, the first thing they see is a glass door with a bright yellow frame and behind it, a large monstera plant, which has grown along with them session by session. On the wall behind the couch where clients sit, I hung a tapestry that features a sun rising over an abstract landscape of pinks and yellows. Since the tapestry is in my eye line as I face clients, I think of it as a constant reminder that each person sitting in front of me has the potential to feel renewal and the possibility of change on a continual basis. The blinds on the east-facing window filter in natural light. From where my client sits on a slate blue couch, their eye might fall on the hanging bookshelves, where I’ve placed a few select volumes, such as the therapy-favorite “Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine, as well as a few unexpected titles, like “Love in a F—Up World” by Dean Spade, and “Grapefruit” by Yoko Ono.
My therapy room is, quite literally, an extension of my home. Far from an institutional feel, the room’s colors, lighting and furnishings are meant to elicit a sense of warmth, connection and solace.
Above the book shelf is another shelf with more whimsical items: a container of various sea animal toys, for an imagined future where I offer clients sand play, as well as two varieties of cat tarot card decks. My desk, where I perch my phone atop a stack of old and new psychology tomes to see remote clients via Zoom, is its own sacred space: orange and blue dishes of honey and orange calcite, abalone shells, a stub of palo santo, and a deer figurine that reminds me of the animal images I conjured as a client doing the work of EMDR. A Himalayan salt lamp emits a soft orange light.
My therapy room is, quite literally, an extension of my home. Far from an institutional feel, the room’s colors, lighting and furnishings are meant to elicit a sense of warmth, connection and solace. And like my home, the language of this room wants to invite and beckon. It can hold the spectrum of emotions evoked in therapy, as well as the silences.
A common refrain we return to in therapy is that “everything is temporary.” Change is constant. In my ideal therapy room, plants live in the room when no one else is in it. Seasonal flowers are brought in, and when they die, composted. The scent of coffee or chai might linger. A client’s fingers might clutch a smooth black onyx, or a jagged rose quartz, or tissues. We are changed, both client and therapist, in the process. As my clients embark on the private journey that is therapy, in a room thoughtfully arranged to contain everything, the room itself is the reliable axis around which meaningful and deep changes can occur.
Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of three books and is a therapist in private practice in Los Angeles.
Sunday Puzzle
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This week’s challenge
Today’s puzzle is a tribute to Mimi. Every answer is a familiar two word phrase or name in which each word starts with the letters MI-.
Ex. Assignment for soldiers –> MILITARY MISSION
1. Pageant title for a contestant from Detroit
2. One of the Twin Cities
3. Nickname for the river through New Orleans
4. Super short skirt
5. Neighborhood in Los Angeles that contains Museum Row
6. Just over four times the distance from the earth to the moon
7. Goateed sing-along conductor of old TV
8. American financier who pioneered so-called “junk bonds”
9. Little accident
10. Land-based weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal
11. In “Snow White,” the evil queen’s words before “on the wall”
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from Benita Rice, of Salem, Ore. Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?
Answer
Notre Dame –> Renovated
Winner
Chee Sing Lee of Bangor, Maine
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
A landmark is a landmark because it tells you that you’re home now — the piece of earth you’ve chosen to inhabit saying, “You’ve made it back, congratulations.” We identify our cities with their landmarks, and because we identify with our cities, we identify with the landmarks too. They are us and we are them, mirroring each other through eternity. A city like New York or Chicago, with the Chrysler Building, the Bean, etc., has landmarks that exist in the world’s popular consciousness. But L.A.’s most cherished landmarks belong to us and us alone, a secret you’re let in on if you live here long enough and pay attention.
The Fashion Nova baddie in horizontal sprawl off the Vertigo, for example, is an emblem for those in the know. Our twisted version of a capitalist guardian angel, patron saint of spandex in a cropped matching set. Welcome to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Fashion Nova. Merging on the 110 South from the 10 East while the sunset burns and traffic thickens is a miracle in more ways than one, and in the spirit of compulsively performing the sign of the cross when you pass a church on the freeway, this billboard is deserving of its own acknowledgment.
It may not be the landmark L.A. asked for, but in Sayre Gomez’s painting “Vertigo,” you begin to understand why it’s the one we deserve. At the opening for “Precious Moments,” Gomez’s solo show at David Kordansky, the room was vibrating. A game of energetic ping-pong unfolded underneath the gallery’s fluorescent light, beams of identification, recollections or stabs of grief bouncing off each piece in the exhibition. People were seeing hyperspecific parts of a city they love reflected in a hyperspecific way — for better and for worse. Recognition has two edges and they both happen to be sharp. Gomez twists the knife deeper for a good cause: He wants you not just to look but to really see.
In his work exist iconic signs of beloved local establishments — like the Playpen — the blinding glint reflecting off downtown’s skyline, telephone poles regarded as totems. The line to see Gomez’s replica of L.A.’s graffiti towers, “Oceanwide Plaza,” snaked through the gallery’s courtyard. Once inside, at least three graffiti writers whose names were blasted on the replica pointed it out proudly, even gave out stickers to take home. The truth can be beautiful and it can be ugly — in this case it’s both — on the flip side showing up in the form of smog, tattered flags and an abandoned graffiti tower that starkly represents the pitfalls of capitalism and greed, a neon arrow pointing to the homelessness crisis.
Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave.
— Sayre Gomez
In the main gallery, I was stuck on “Vertigo.” On the 12-foot canvas, my eye went to the place out of focus: the thin strip of billboard in the background featuring a young woman with sand-dune hips, patent knee-high boots and long black hair laid up on her side, wearing cat ears and a tiger bodysuit as flush as second skin. The model made the kind of eye contact that felt dangerous — might cause an accident if you’re not careful. “#1 Halloween Destination … FASHION NOVA,” it read. I knew her, anyone who has driven through the two main arteries of Los Angeles knows her. The black-and-white smiley motif of the Vertigo, an events space, sat right next to her face, just happy to be there, it seemed, above a painted sign that says “Ready to Party?”
The sky was the color of cotton candy, but the stale kind that’s been hardening in a plastic bag for days after the fair. Something rancid about it. In the foreground of the painting was a car encampment with a tattered floral sheet woven through the windows, cloth tarps and couch cushions creating a shield against the elements. Small plastic children’s toys lined at the top of the car — dinosaurs and dump trucks and sharks — creating their own shrunken skyline in front of the Vertigo, signaling that young kids likely lived there. It’s less juxtaposition for juxtaposition’s sake and more an accurate reflection of the breakneck duality of living in a place like L.A.
Even angels exist within the context of their environments. Our Fashion Nova baddie hangs off the Vertigo, a building that has used its ad space as physical clickbait and political posturing for over a decade. It’s promoting the kind of fast fashion brand that’s been regarded as a case study on the industry’s environmental impact. In the years the billboard has been up, it’s looked over dozens and dozens of car encampments like the one depicted in Gomez’s piece.
She feels dubious, yes. But no less like ours.
Julissa James: I’ve lived in L.A. for 13 years now. For me, the city and the architecture of the city is less the Frank Lloyd Wrights and Frank Gehrys — there’s that — but other landmarks that signal, “Oh, I’m home.” The Fashion Nova baddie above the Vertigo has always been that for me. Your piece is layered and there’s so much more to it than just that, but that’s the first thing I saw and was like, “Whoa. I need to talk to Sayre. We need to talk about ‘Vertigo.’”
Sayre Gomez: It’s like L.A.’s Statue of Liberty. It’s the city of anti-landmarks, you know what I mean? I mean, there’s the Hollywood sign, which I think is so telling, because it’s the remnants of a real estate venture. The city is built by real estate schemes and 100 years later we’re feeling the effects of it. You’ve got empty skyscrapers and a massive homeless catastrophe. L.A. doesn’t really have real landmarks. It has anti-landmarks.
JJ: When did the Fashion Nova billboard above the Vertigo click for you as something that felt representative of the city, or something that you wanted to depict?
SG: My studio is in Boyle Heights, so I pass that billboard multiple times a week. This is my 20th year in L.A. and that building’s always been a big mystery to me. It was empty when I moved here before this guy Shawn Farr bought it and turned it into Casa Vertigo. I think he probably makes more money on it with the ad space than anything. I know nobody who has ever been there. Very mysterious to me. So that’s what I was drawn to.
(Paul Salveson from David Kordansky Gallery)
The Vertigo has always been mysterious to me. And that whole fashion industry is mysterious to me — the kind of shmatta, American Apparel-adjacent, or maybe coming out of the wake of that. These kinds of businesses, or the representations of these businesses, how do they function and how do they flourish? Is it aboveboard? What more perfectly encapsulates that than that building? It’s this weird thing you can’t quite figure out but somehow it has a lot of money and then it’s an event space, supposedly billed as that. Clearly it’s this big ad thing, and I’m very interested in the changing dynamics of capital. The capital of yesteryear, which was based on the brick and mortar, where things are being made in a specific location, maybe on an assembly line or in a specific way, to a kind of capital that is based solely on advertising or on viewership. These beautiful buildings acting as pedestals for some kind of ad space, you know? It becomes an anti-landmark for me. Something where I’m like, “Oh, there’s that thing again.”
JJ: It’s this gorgeous Beaux Arts building …
SG: It’s a Freemason building!
JJ: When I’ve talked to some people about the Vertigo, they’re like, “the Fashion Nova building?”
SG: They always have the woman in the same pose — same pose, different clothes. If you remember before Fashion Nova, they would have these provocative ad campaigns or provocative slogans. “Twerk Miley” was up, remember that? They did a Trump one: “TRUMP NOW.” They did one for Kanye when he ran for president. The 10 and the 110 are literally the crossroads of the city, so it’s really poised to be a special building. It has a special designation because of the location.
JJ: Talk to me about the process of doing this piece. Where did it start and how did it evolve?
SG: I was cruising around that vicinity trying to see if I could get a good vantage point to take photos of Vertigo. And then I stumbled upon this car — the car that’s in the foreground of the painting. Anytime I see an encampment that has kids’ toys, things that reference back to the lives of children, it hits hard. But I like to lay it all out there. I like to make things confrontational. I want it to be difficult. The painting isn’t based on a one-to-one photo [Gomez paints from a composite rendering of images he’s taken around town], but I knew that I wanted to use that car, and I knew I wanted to get the Vertigo building, and so I started just messing around with different iterations. I could never find a good angle to take a good photo of the building, so I just went on Vertigo’s website and I was like, “I’m just using these.” I switched the sky and put a more moody, atmospheric sky in.
JJ: Which I loved, because we know that feeling — you’re merging onto the 110 and you see a beautiful sunset. The euphoria of like, “L.A. is the best city in the world.” But you know what? What I found so interesting about your piece is that it was revealing to me about myself, but also about so many of us that live in L.A. and have lived here for years and have developed a jadedness. When I saw your piece, immediately I was like, “Oh my God, the Vertigo! The Vertigo! The Vertigo!” And then I was like, “OK, wait, hold on, there’s so much more going on here.” But the fact that my eye went to that first instead of the car encampment, the kids’ toys, brought up a lot of questions about my own relationship to the city and the things that we choose to see, the things that maybe we’ve seen so much of that we subconsciously filter it out. Why was it important for you to put these two things up against each other in this way?
SG: Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave. That’s what I’m doing in my work at large. I use the sunsets and the beauty to create a dialogue, to entice people to sort of look a little bit at how things are contextualized, how things act, what’s actually happening. I don’t make things in a vacuum. I was working on this show and I was going to really push this agenda of incorporating more of my experience with my kids into the work. That’s also a double-edged sword. I wanted to interject some levity, because the work can get so dark. I wanted to bring in some iconography from their world and things that they get excited about. When you’re juxtaposing that with really stark things, it becomes darker. I want to thicken the stock a little bit. Make things a little more complex.
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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