Yesterday I was lucky enough to share a couple of
hours with Richard Unger, who is a) one of the smartest people I’ve ever met—and
I tend to hang with very, very smart
people—and b) more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Richard is responsible for teaching me the skill
that has given me the independence to further my dilettantism, though I admit
it has also threatened my commitment to dabbling because it is so completely fascinating. He is not just a hand analyst, he is THE hand
analyst. A former investment counselor,
he taught himself palmistry as a young man.
A short
discourse on palmistry is necessary here!
Palmistry is distinct from fortunetelling. Fortunetellers sometimes use palmistry as a
tool for divination, just like they use crystals, tarot cards, goat entrails, and
God knows what else. I offer no opinions on the validity of what they do; like
every profession, there is, I assume, a mixed bag of practitioners out there.
But palmistry is actually a somatic method of
character and personality assessment. When
I was a psychotherapist, assessment was my greatest love. I learned as many systems of assessment as I
could find. I played with the DSM workbook the way other people do crossword
puzzles. Richard’s system of hand
analysis is the best assessment system I have ever seen. One of the greatest
things about it is that it works for everybody. And it is the only system I’ve
seen that doesn’t overtly or covertly (yeah, I’m lookin’ at you, Enneagram) pathologize
people, but instead gives them a useful, positive perspective from which to
accept themselves and keep on growing.
Possessed of a sharp, curious, analytic mind, Richard
saw many shortcomings in the various schools of traditional palmistry, so he then
went on to create his own system! One of
the unique things about Richard’s brand of hand analysis is that it rests on
the secrets of identity encoded in our fingerprints.
As usual, he was brimming with projects: a San
Francisco high school wants him to do hand analysis with interested students;
he’s getting ready to teach a year-long master class in Bellingham, Washington;
he will fly to Switzerland for ongoing work with the clients of several
psychiatrists in Zurich. And always,
always, he’s looking for ways to bring his work to the attention of larger
numbers of mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists here in the United States.
One of his persistent dreams is to argue with every
single faculty psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Richard LOVES to argue. He argues intelligently, enthusiastically—even
joyously. Because his mind is so lively
and agile, he makes his points clearly and often humorously, but the remarkable
thing is that he’s so quick to grasp your counter-argument that he can instantaneously
analyze it, break it down into components he can agree and disagree with, and thus
move the argument into new, original research on the spot. Arguing with Richard is like Mr. Toad’s wild
ride—terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
Richard always serves up a heady brew of new possibilities.
I came away from our coffee date with my
head swirling with them. Perhaps I will do some tutoring for him, maybe teach
one of his students some of the marketing tools I’ve learned for our unusual profession;
I might work with him on the high school project. And then there’s that film documentary that
is being made about us: UNTAPPED, Secrets
of the Hand, which has been on the verge of completion for so long—I hear
it’s alllllmost finished…Red Carpet, here we come!
And as always, I drove away from our meeting feeling
immense gratitude to Richard Unger for his intelligence, his humor, his skill,
and his immense generosity in teaching me to do what I do.
At sfo reading this....am so full of questions I can't wait to ask when we get together again!
ReplyDeleteOh Goody! I love to answer questions! (Also love to give opinions on things. Want opinions? I got a million of 'em. Not shy about sharing, either. :D )
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