In this episode, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung shares a glimpse into the psyche's profound influence on creativity and personal growth. I found my own experiences with psychoanalysis echoed in our dialogue, highlighting the transformative power it has on both the canvas, the page, and the mind. Maxine's articulate distinction between psychoanalysis and other therapeutic forms paints a vivid picture of the therapeutic landscape. At the same time, her personal narrative and the profound impact of her beloved childhood librarian provide a rich backdrop to her professional evolution.
Maxine discusses her literary contributions, notably her latest book, What Women Want: A Therapist, Her Patients, and Their True Stories of Desire, Power, and Love, which delves beyond Freud's well-trodden question—what do women want?—to celebrate the authentic needs and desires of women.
Maxine's first novel, The Eighth Girl, was optioned by Netflix and was a most anticipated book from Bustle, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and LitHub.
In What Women Want, Maxine emphasizes the empathic and advocacy-oriented nature of her writing, inviting readers on a journey of self-discovery. This episode is a tribute to the potency of psychotherapy's intersection with storytelling, an intimate exploration for anyone fascinated by the depths of the human experience.
Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
What Women Want: A Therapist, Her Patients, and Thier True Stories of Desire, Power, and Love, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
The Eighth Girl, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
Long Live Our Librarians: An Ode To Mrs. Veal, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell
American Originality: Essays on Poetry, Louis Glück
In this episode, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung shares a glimpse into the psyche's profound influence on creativity and personal growth. I found my own experiences with psychoanalysis echoed in our dialogue, highlighting the transformative power it has on both the canvas, the page, and the mind. Maxine's articulate distinction between psychoanalysis and other therapeutic forms paints a vivid picture of the therapeutic landscape. At the same time, her personal narrative and the profound impact of her beloved childhood librarian provide a rich backdrop to her professional evolution.
Maxine discusses her literary contributions, notably her latest book, What Women Want: A Therapist, Her Patients, and Their True Stories of Desire, Power, and Love, which delves beyond Freud's well-trodden question—what do women want?—to celebrate the authentic needs and desires of women.
Maxine's first novel, The Eighth Girl, was optioned by Netflix and was a most anticipated book from Bustle, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and LitHub.
In What Women Want, Maxine emphasizes the empathic and advocacy-oriented nature of her writing, inviting readers on a journey of self-discovery. This episode is a tribute to the potency of psychotherapy's intersection with storytelling, an intimate exploration for anyone fascinated by the depths of the human experience.
Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
What Women Want: A Therapist, Her Patients, and Thier True Stories of Desire, Power, and Love, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
The Eighth Girl, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
Long Live Our Librarians: An Ode To Mrs. Veal, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell
American Originality: Essays on Poetry, Louis Glück
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly. Welcome to the Bookshop podcast. Each week, I present interviews with independent Bookshop owners from around the globe, authors, publishing professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice. To help the show reach more people, please share it with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to Episode 240.
Speaker 1:Maxine Mae Fung Chung is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and training psychotherapist. She lectures on trauma, gender and sexuality and clinical dissociation. Originally trained in the arts, she previously worked as a creative director for 10 years at Condonast, the Sunday Times and the Times in London. Maxine currently works in private practice, where she has a particular interest in the creative feminine advocating for women and girls finding a voice. Her debut novel, the Eighth Girl, published in 2020, was optioned by Netflix and was a most anticipated book from Bustle, the Rumpus, electric Literature and Lithub. Maxine's latest book, titled what Women Want a therapist, her patients and their true stories of desire, power and love, is a profound and intimate exploration of female desire and identity as studied through the lives of seven of Maxine's female therapy patients. Hi, maxine, and welcome to the show. It's lovely to have you here.
Speaker 2:Hello, mandy, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:I loved your book, maxine. I thought it was fabulous what women want, and now I want to read the Eighth Girl. I haven't read that yet. Before we get too deep into our conversation, could you define the words psychoanalysis and psychotherapy?
Speaker 2:Well, psychoanalytical inquiry means that we probably go into more depth. We may stay in analysis a lot longer. The frequency may be more than twice, three, even four times a week. So we're going down in the depths of the psychisoma and of course it stems from Freud's original thinking around drive and drive orientation. So whilst we may be modernizing a therapy, we are coming from the founder of psychoanalysis, which is Freud's theories and drive theories, where a psychotherapy can be many things. It could be CBT, it could be EMDR, it could be many things where a psychoanalysis lies in one genre, one form of working. Psychotherapy is many things. It may be for CBT you're coming just for a short period, potentially to work through grief it could be for six months or a year. It could be EMDR, it could be tapping. I would say that therapy is more of an umbrella for many other therapies.
Speaker 1:You and I were talking earlier and I mentioned that I had been in psychoanalysis for going on 11 years. I think I just turned 50 when I started the therapy and I really enjoyed it. However, it does go deep and it does get dark. I have been journaling my dreams for nearly 30 years and so that part of Jung and analysis I really enjoyed. Plus, I was painting a lot then and that really helped with my writing. I loved it. But you can't go into psychoanalysis thinking you're just going to feel good or get quick answers, because it doesn't work like that. But I highly recommend it. I thought it was fascinating. You go very deep and you go very dark.
Speaker 2:Life certainly takes a dive before we rise again, doesn't it? When we go to those depths of understanding ourselves and the inquiry, we've entered analysis, and I imagine being an artist Mandy, you were interested in all the archetypes as well that Jung bore.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, absolutely. It just gave me a different way to look at the world and my place in it. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. Okay, I would like to learn about you and whether your chosen career path was the one you envisioned as a high school student.
Speaker 2:Sure, it's a great question. I think if my mother and father here were here with us, they had very strong opinions about what they wanted for me. So my father came over as an immigrant in the late 60s. So he came from Hong Kong to the UK and he had a motto which was if you work hard, you are rewarded, but at the same time we keep our heads down, we don't become too visible.
Speaker 2:We grew up I grew up, me and my two brothers grew up in a predominantly white working class community. So we were, we experienced the level of othering to some degree. But I think my father was also somewhat what he might describe as a curiosity to the community that he'd come into. So I think he might have said that he would have liked me to have worked in his restaurant and my mother would have liked me to have been a hairdresser. So you know kind of blue collar work. You know they would have had me in factories. Because of our working class roots and in a way, you know psychotherapy and hairdressers there's not a lot of difference. We both listen, we both engage, we have empathy.
Speaker 2:So I think my mom was actually onto something very early on, but I got lost in books and words and they became, without being too dramatic, they became an obsession for me. I could escape into words and into literature, and I think it was the attachment that I made to a very early mentor, who I'm sure we're going to talk about later, the librarian Mrs Veal who really changed the course of my life and had me wondering about what a further education would look like. I came from a family that hadn't gone into further education, so I was the first person in my family to go to university, which was achieved by bursaries and so forth. So, yes, it turned out that I took a career in the arts. That's how I arrived, and then I became an analyst, or trained to be an analyst, in my 30s.
Speaker 1:And do you remember what actually sparked the interest in you to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist? It's quite a jump from being a creative director for 10 years.
Speaker 2:I was also secretly writing. So from the age of nine I was writing poetry thanks to the librarian that I was so fond of and who became a lifelong friend. So I was secretly writing poetry and dropping them in jokes of hedgerows in supermarket aisles. I was trying to connect and I think it was because I was terribly lonely and I think Mrs Veal noticed in me something of a crippling aloneness and later a very narrow adolescence. So I was always writing secretly.
Speaker 2:I was always drawn to nature and the arts, but as a working class family we were not really. It wasn't part of our vocab really. And that's not to say that we you know any class can obviously access the arts, but for me we didn't have shelves of books. I had to, you know, go to the library and so forth. So I think my career in the arts, which I enjoyed very, very much, it was for about 13 years. I was an art director. I was at Condé Nast, traveler, gq and later went on to launch the Sunday Times magazine in the UK. But during that time, mandy, I was a Samaritan. So I was working with suicidal people voluntary for 10 years and I think that that was where the real interest sparked of how conversation and connection can really support people to come out of dark and dire times. So I think that that was the spark and I also went into my own analysis at 25. So I was in five times a week age 25, I think purely for the connection.
Speaker 1:So there was a drive, you know, and that drive I think I have my father to thank for what I find fascinating about getting older is that we can look back at our life and recognize the moments where changes started to unfold or where people were kind of molding us a little bit, as in our parents, in your case, your father. For a quick example, my sister and I always thought that our mother was kind of pushing us away, but in retrospect, when we look back, she was helping us become strong, independent women, encouraging us to make our own decisions. But it wasn't until later in our lives that we realized this.
Speaker 2:Right. So do you think that it was less, maybe not pushing you away, but pushing you towards yourself?
Speaker 1:That's an interesting point, and I think you're absolutely correct. I think she always envisioned herself as traveling and maybe living in another country, but that dream for her didn't happen, and I think that's probably the reason she coaxed us into this independent way of thinking. Do you think the same way about your dad?
Speaker 2:I think he was a very strict man and he had, you know, things were. It was very black and white, right and wrong, and in a way there was a comfort with that binary when I was younger. But what I found as I got older was that I was more drawn to the in-betweens and the not knowing and the curiosity. I found the binaries quite restricting and that's interesting also to me, with having been raised by a white British mother and a Chinese father, you know that kind of mixed heritage again of the, the either or, and I've always found that I've come to the in-between, I've not wanted to fall in one or the other. So I find great comfort in the in-betweens and I'm, you know, I'm very interested in, you know, kind of post-colonial discourse without healing, without resolution. What happens when there is resolution. So whilst my father was black and white, I think he also gave me the opportunity to think about the in-betweens because of his black and whiteness.
Speaker 1:There's something you talk about in your books and in some of your interviews, and that's ghosts in the nursery. I tend to think of it as inherited suffering, but I love the phrase ghosts in the nursery because it's talking about multiple generations, not just our parents, and our forebears and our lineage.
Speaker 2:It's what shapes us right, and however much we try to escape or avoid or swerve our ghosts, they come to find us, sure enough.
Speaker 1:Yes, they do. If you were to paint a picture of yourself today, do you see your upbringing as deepening the swirls and the tones of pink in your self-portrait? I?
Speaker 2:love the description of colourful swirls of pink and Beautiful. It's a beautiful. I can really feel your art to stream and even your talking.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what the text in your book had me thinking of all the pinks and the reds and the oranges and the deep maroons and deep reds. And I love the cover of the book with all of the colors and the gold and the dress you wear in your cover shot. It's beautiful. So all of those colors evoke a great image of the feminine. Yes, anyway, back to you. How did your upbringing paint the picture of how you think today?
Speaker 2:I'd like to say it's more color by numbers when we get those paintings and maybe when we want to color outside of the lines. So, whilst these very firm black and white and I think the black and white kept my father very safe I understand now why those black and white were used, because it kept him safe, but for me it also gave me an opportunity to rebel against. So I would say that the painting is. I mean, I use the color by numbers, but I'm not averse to thinking about a slightly more. It may be a painting, but it may also be a piece of sculpture, it may be many things, or it may be a poem, it may be a piece of creative writing, but it absolutely has shaped who I am and I, you know I have the utmost respect and challenging thoughts and feelings in terms of my forebears.
Speaker 1:Maxine, when you said more paint by numbers, it hit me. I started to tear up and I thought, wow, is that having an effect on me? Because it's reflecting back on me. It wasn't that. What affected me was the thought of anyone being restricted, especially creatively. So here's me talking about swells of color and the depth of the color and the tones, and you're talking about paint by numbers. It just broke my heart.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and so the desire, when we have the paint by numbers, the desire within me is we know that that's the construct or the constriction we might say and there is a desire within me then to paint outside those lines. So again, you know the kind of energy, that creative energy empowered to give one a reason to paint outside those lines, which it was my attempt with. What women want in many ways, well you, definitely did that, Maxine.
Speaker 1:Your book is fantastic. In interviews you've said the question isn't what women want, but rather the statement women want. So can you expand on the research and reasoning that brought you to this statement?
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, it's really a conversation that I'm in with Freud, because Freud's original question, which was what do women want? And then he claimed, after 30 years of inquiry, to be no closer to understanding what women wanted. And this kind of was bewildering for me because in my research and my work in clinical practice it was very clear that all, if not most, of the women and men and everybody in between that were coming to my practice knew clearly what they wanted.
Speaker 2:So I like to start from the premise of not to what do women want, but women want period. Now we just have to inquire what that desire is, what that want is, what that need is. So let's just start from there. That feels like a more modern premise to begin, rather than the question of what do women want. It kind of implies also that maybe women don't want and even if that want is very small or lukewarm, there is still want there and still desire, and maybe, for whatever reason or not, that desire has not been ignited. So I choose to start from that place. Women want period, without the question point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and I think there's sometimes a fine line between what we need and what we want.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and sometimes I feel that we maybe need to address our needs before our wants also and, as you say, those basic human needs that we need we all need love and we all need companionship and friendship and food and shelter before we can maybe answer some of the more nuanced desires.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. In 2020, William Morrow published your novel the Eighth Girl, a thriller about Alexa Wu, a brilliant yet darkly self-aware young woman whose chaotic life is controlled by a series of alternate personalities. In the synopsis of the Eighth Girl, the question is asked, quote does the truth lead to self-discovery or to self-distraction? End quote On page 17 of what Women Want. Terry asks you so what happens now? To which you answer now we work. Is there a relationship between these two books and their female characters fiction and non-fiction regarding the path of self-discovery and truth?
Speaker 2:What a great question, andy. I love the question. Thank you, I love it. Well, I guess the thread that holds the two books is that I am the writer and the advocate for women's voices and writing, lives and storytelling, because I don't think that non-fiction is non-storytelling. I believe that non-fiction can be storytelling if the author wants it to be so.
Speaker 2:I guess that the link is my ongoing desire to understand women, people, all humans, more deeply, which was what I did with Alexa Wu's character, who has a series of alternate personalities, and it was my attempt also to bring to the forefront and in the culture what multiple personalities really looked like. In the culture, people living with this diagnosis have been demonised, and I wanted to give it a different lens. It's often depicted that these people have committed crimes when in fact they've actually had crimes committed against them. So I think a lot of my work is about rising others and advocating for others, whilst being in connection in a deeper, meaningful way, and also collaboration. So I think the link is my desire to know more deeply myself and others.
Speaker 1:And, as you are the link, being the writer, I was fascinated by the format and style in which you wrote what women want, because in places it reads like fiction, immersing the reader into the lives of your patients, which draws one to empathise with each woman's story. Was this style there from the onset of writing or did it evolve as you wrote the book?
Speaker 2:It absolutely was there from the get go, because it was also highly collaborative in that myself and the seven women who I talk about they read every chapter. I was very transparent and I wanted it to feel like a collaboration. Kitty actually gave the name of the title for her own chapter.
Speaker 2:And I wanted them to all feel included because it was their stories that I was telling and I think the reason why I wrote it this way was that when I read other books with clinical vignettes and they felt quite distancing and I wanted to be more intimate with the reader and I'm really pleased to hear that you felt empathy for the stories, because that was my intention was to really for us all to connect. I think anyone could recognise parts of themselves in one of these seven stories, so it was very intentional that we write and it's therapy is much like storytelling, yeah, telling our life stories, going over them and understanding them.
Speaker 1:But your book what Women Want goes deeper. It gives us the clinical information, but also the personal side of each of your patients. That's what drew me in, that's what made me empathetic for all of these women. Ok, let's talk about you. What have you learned about yourself through writing what Women Want?
Speaker 2:What have I learned? I've learned that I want to write more, but I love writing. I've learned that I need to work to write and I need to write to work, and what a privilege that is to be able to do both. But I think one of the greatest learnings is that, moving forward, I will be discerning and protect my writing life with great gusto, because I think when we have busy lives and we hold another vocation or another career alongside writing, we have to be really protective. We have to guard it like a fortress and really honor that time and space we don't have hours on end. We have to snatch those moments for writing. Yes, they are precious moments.
Speaker 1:They really are, yes. Okay, let's talk about desire. Can you expand on the relationship between connection and desire, or are they one and the same?
Speaker 2:regarding the female psyche, Well, I think, first and foremost, the connection is with oneself, because if we're connecting with another and trying to tell them what our desire is and that could be not just sexual desire, it could be a desire, you know, as we saw in the book the desire doesn't just cover kind of sexual element of one's lived life. It can be about making new friendships or the reclamation of our bodies or reclamation of our life, as we saw with Agatha, who falls in love in her 70s and claims to have never been in love before then. So I think it is a deep connection with ourselves and listening to ourselves and honoring our bodies and listening and trusting our bodies and our mind. And if the body keeps the score, we listen to that score. So I think, before the connection goes outward to our loved ones friends, partners, families we need to connect with ourselves and be truly honest, if we can, where that desire lies.
Speaker 1:That's a lot to digest in that answer. Thank you, that was great. Let's get back to Mrs Veal. In 2021, you wrote a beautiful essay for the Irish Times about Mrs Veal, a librarian who remained your friend for 40 years. You wrote a sentence in a letter to her while you're in college. Quote I'm struck by the creative feminine and she, like your poets, keeps me company. End quote. How do you see this phrase reflected in your present work? Hard to read that sentence and not be emotional, it makes me teary again. Oh, it's making me quite emotional as well.
Speaker 2:If I'm thinking about Mrs Veal. It's a beautiful feeling and a beautiful memory. I think the creative feminine is with me always, whether that's in my mothering, with my son, whether it's in this conversation that you and I are now having, whether it's with engaging with the page on the words, whether it's looking at a painting or a colour by numbers or a pink swirl. I think that the creative feminine has been a constant companion for me. She also kicks my ass when I'm not. She LAUGHS kind of, you know, when I'm not kind of making art or thinking creatively. She doesn't like to be ignored too long. You know she'll be yapping at my ankles if I leave her too long. I think we need one another.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I agree, and in fact, I don't think there's anything better than being around other women and having this conversation, keeping each other going, whatever it is creatively that we're wanting to achieve, wanting to create it's so important. I resonated with what you said about thinking of the creative feminine as a being, because then she is a part of our conversation and, like you said, she will kick our ass if we need it. She LAUGHS. Ok, now, before I ask you my final question, there was something that intrigued me. Can you talk about your father's death, because you didn't know he had died?
Speaker 2:right, I didn't know, mandy, it was so I hadn't seen my father for over 20 years. We'd become estranged, so he had left the UK and gone back to China, and so we were estranged and me and my brother actually found out about his death six months after the event and the shock was it was, yeah, it was Painful, painful. As an analyst, I thought I went to that kind of crazy place of thinking and my body ought to have known that he had left our Earth. My body hadn't. Why hadn't my body been signalled in some way that my birth father had gone, had left? And that was the kind of preoccupation that I was working through in my own analysis and reflections, and there was a kind of echoism of grief. You know that kind of had to be that had to be honoured.
Speaker 1:And the way you found out too was just so unexpected, and I'm not going to give that away because it's in the book. Is your mum still alive?
Speaker 2:My mum's still alive. Yes, she's still in the UK and I don't know if she's read the book. I'm not sure, but I have hopes that she has or will at some point.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I hope so too. Let's talk about books. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:That's such a difficult question to answer, because I never, I rarely, have more than one on the go. I usually have poetry, fiction, non-fiction, maybe a memoir, but the work of fiction that I'm reading at the moment is the Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrill, and my son bought me a beautiful book for Christmas. It's Louise Gluck's American Originality, which is essays on poetry. What a beautiful gift. Yes, my son's studying fine art actually Mandy, at the moment. What specific field of fine art? He's an oil painter. So those are the two that I've got on the go at the moment, but you know there's probably four or five others running in tandem.
Speaker 1:I know that feeling well. Maxine, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I hope Alice's have too. You've given us a lot to think about.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you, it's been a pleasure talking to you, mandy.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with Maxine Mae Fung Chung about her new book what Women Want a therapist for patients and the true stories of desire, power and love. To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, the music provided by Brian Beverly, executive Assistant to Mandy Adrian Otterhan and Graphic Design by Francis Verralla. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.