Setting a Tone with Paula Kliger
Episode 14
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Paula Christian Kliger, PhD, ABPP
Paula Christian Kliger is a board-certified clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and for 35 years, has been President/Founder of both Psychological Assets and Kliger Consulting Group. With broad professional expertise in clinical, consultation and research practices, she works with children/adolescents, adults; families, leaders, and organizations, and communities from diverse racial/sociocultural identities, cross-generational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Her specialties in crisis recovery and trauma have lead to significant rethinking of intervention, consultation and coaching processes for transformative change and growth. Dr. Kliger represents professions, organizations, and family business clients that are Fortune 500 companies, multi-national corporations, and non-profit organizations. She designs innovative psychoanalytically-informed humanistic programs that have been presented throughout the US and internationally.
Dr. Kliger has received the Public Leadership Credential (PLC) from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School and was recently appointed to the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) as the North America Region Representative of “The Community and the World Committee on Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism.” She is Chair of APSA’s Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) Section: The Psychoanalyst in the Community; is member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO), APA, DIV 39, and is founding/member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak (BPS).
In terms of philanthropy and pro-bono initiatives, Dr. Kliger is Principal Consultant for the non-profit organization, Harlem Family Institute committed to psychoanalytic training of multicultural mental health clinicians and is President/Chair of the Harlem Family Services dedicated to providing clinical services as well as consultation and life coaching skills to underserved multicultural communities located across New York City. She teaches her “Self-Study” and “Power Your Mind” model internationally, Advanced Ethics at Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute where she received her analytic training, Cultural Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Working-Through in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy as Clinical Assistant Professor, at Wayne State University, School of Medicine.
Dr. Kliger is an award-winning poet and illustrator and her co-produced podcast: “We Are Human First” received the 2020 Hermes International Creative Gold Award. For more information about Dr. Kliger, see LinkedIn and psychassets.com
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Music is an art form that connects us to others, beyond language and culture. It strikes a chord that moves us both physically and emotionally. In this sense, whether we're artists or amateurs, music can be a powerful outlet and refuge for our emotions and experiences. It holds the remarkable ability to facilitate feelings, transformation, and unity. Today's guest believes that too, and draws a parallel between music and the transformative nature of the therapeutic journey.
Paula Kliger is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating children, adults, couples, families, and groups. Her connection to music runs deep. As a young musician, she toured the world and witnessed the profound curative capabilities of music firsthand.
On this episode of The Art of Listening, Paula takes us on a captivating journey at the nexus of music and psychoanalysis. Reflecting on the invaluable lessons from her time as a performer and writer, Paula recounts her discovery of the power of music in healing others and, in turn, healing herself. As she advanced in her analytic career, delving into group work, trauma, and disaster relief, Paula’s musical knowledge continued to inform her approach. Today, she shares how creating an atmosphere and setting the right tone allows us to create safe spaces that foster understanding.
Join us as Paula unveils her unique insights into the music of listening.
Chapters
1 - Life-changing stories from Paula’s travels as a touring musician
2 - Music as a universal language and self-reflection practice
3 - First professional experience in psychotherapy.
4 - Bringing her expertise to trauma and disaster work
5 - How Paula’s musical background informed her approach to group work
Links
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Paula: [00:00:03] There's something about singing itself and your breathwork that you engage in, and the meditative and contemplative aspects of it that actually set the stage for doing self-reflective work. There's this opportunity to listen to oneself, to listen more clearly, to what you've experienced, and to capture something more, something deeper.
Eileen: [00:00:40] I'm Eileen Dunn, and this is the Art of listening, a podcast that delves into the incomparable power of human connection and the magic of good depth talk therapy. Today's guest is Paula Kliger. Whether it lulls us to sleep. Walks us through the day. Or brings us together in concert. Music is a part of our lives in every way. We can feel it pulsing at our fingertips, vibrating through the deepest silence. The dancing, the singing, the drumming of beats. Instinctive and irresistible. It moves us physically and emotionally to. Carrying us through joy and pleasure, love and loss, anger and grief. When all other memory has evaporated. It's the thing we never forget. It makes us say, in ways we otherwise might not explain what it is to be alive. Which is why the way we make music and listen to it too. Echoes so profoundly what happens in the therapeutic space. Or, as today's guest will tell you.
Paula: [00:02:04] I nearly always introduce the work I do analytically now in groups as setting a tone, and that fits with music. There's a sense of a tone creating an atmosphere where we all can join and want to.
Eileen: [00:02:23] This voice belongs to the wonderful Paula Kliger. Paula's career is a celebration of music and therapeutic care coming together in harmony. I admire her creative approach to therapeutic practice. And as you'll hear in this episode, it started long before she entered the field. From her youth traveling the world as a singer songwriter. And her experience in Vietnam during the war. Paula first delved into depth work through music. Back in the US, her affinity for the art became a tool in practice. Today. She looks back on the borders crossed within psychotherapy and analysis. From individual encounters to group settings. From personal history to collective work. Paula offers us a rare moment of connection with the power of music. So while you listen, I invite you to reflect on the ways you respond to the music of your day to day. How are you moved by sounds? Can you recall a time where a string of notes arranged just so managed to reach within and catch hold of your heart? And while you were caught in that moment. What stood out. Above all else. To help us answer these questions, let us welcome Paula Kliger. She is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating children, adults, couples, families, and groups. She is also the founder and president of Psych Assets. You began your adult professional working life as a singer songwriter in the world of music. Tell me about that. Yeah, yeah I did.
Paula: [00:04:27] Well, I, I always loved music and I wanted to travel around the world, actually. I mean, I was open to doing that, and I wasn't interested in, in really doing college right away. I mean, I, I knew I wanted to major in music at some point. I did some initial college, but I decided music was what I wanted to do. And so I started writing music, but also doing what you call in those days gigs. And someone heard me sing and they said, you know, would you be willing to travel with our band? I said, yes, and I had had a fair amount of training in music and singing. And so I got some opportunities to do music in the Caribbean, in the United States. And then I got some experiences to change everything. To really move me in my music and my writing. For example, I was able, as a very young woman, to be asked to join a band as the only woman traveling to the Far East. And in that experience, I was able to go to Japan and Thailand and and a number of other places, including Vietnam. And that experience of doing music in Vietnam, which was South Vietnam at the time for the United Services organization, kind of set the stage for me to decide to become a psychologist. It's kind of an interesting turnaround, but we traveled for six weeks around various areas of the Far East, in particular several a number of weeks in Vietnam itself, out in the countryside, as well as in Ho Chi Minh City now, which was called Saigon. And one of the most important experiences I recall was singing at the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, that is that space, that line between where you are not in combat and then you are in combat.
Paula: [00:06:51] It's where all of the troops would hang out and prepare to go into combat. And our band, our little band, Five Guys and me were kind of sent out to the DMZ. We actually spent the night before our performance the next day, and I recall very distinctly, I got to sleep in the general's tent. That was kind of like my special thing at the time, by the way, women were not allowed to be in combat. So this was an all male soldier group, and I recall very distinctly sleeping, getting up in the morning and hearing all kinds of loud noises and walking out and seeing into the sunlight and seeing a bunch of guys building the stage, building the platform, and making a space for all of us to perform. And right next to that stage was the gargantuan Sherman tank. What a contrast. But in that moment in time, I was very young. I learned something about life and death, about courage, bravery, and I learned a great deal about loss and pain and suffering, mental pain and suffering. I learned a lot about the troops and how they were suffering and struggling with how they were perceived in the United States during that time, there was a lot of protesting going on about our troops being in Vietnam. When I sang, many of the young people who I we sang for were going into combat the next day and their lives were lost, which was another very powerful learning experience for me. It was so powerful that I became a part of the tour of duty.
Paula: [00:08:59] In a sense, it was my tour of duty with all of these young men and, you know, leaders of the services. But then there's the other side of the experience that informed me, and that was my spending time with the Vietnamese people, because not only did I visit the hospitals for soldiers, but I also was taken to visit hospitals where there were Vietnamese children and all kinds of family members who had been wounded. I recall very distinctly singing, for I must have been like a 10 to 11 year old girl who had been burned severely, and you would think that she was just in such pain that she wouldn't be able to tolerate any kind of interference from someone like me showing up. But I was encouraged to come and talk to her. I was encouraged to come and sing to her, and when she saw my, she turned to see my face. I'll never forget it. And she first had a kind of agony on her face. But then when she saw me, she burst into this smile that was extraordinary. And I began to sing for her a very well known African Caribbean folk song. I peeked in to say. Good night. I always kind of forget now. I heard my child in prayer. It was really. It's like a song that you sing as a lullaby. Scarlet ribbons. Scarlet, Scarlet ribbons. And she really just was so attentive the whole time. And while she was attentive to my singing, I was attentive to this, this little body. That was clearly struggling to maintain some sense of comfort around having this, these burns.
Eileen: [00:11:14] What a life changing moment and what a privilege to to share Paula's formative experience, to dive with her into this scene of loss and pain and humanity. Far more than a job or just another gig. Paula shows us here that art holds power. It breaks the boundaries of language and culture. It crosses front lines. And finds common ground where suffering, understanding, and healing intersect. This Paula learned in direct encounter with the people of Vietnam. And she never was the same. The thing that I'm just appreciating so much is that in the fullness of that experience you had in your youth, I feel deeply as you tell it. It's as if I can see that little girl, and I can see her beaming back to you and what an effect. And that you took that with you. And given the quality of your mind, I can appreciate where pursuing an academic path was almost necessary to join with the arts that come to you so naturally.
Paula: [00:12:39] Well, it's an interesting journey. So I came back from Vietnam and, uh, Far East tour and my the band and I had different reactions to it. The reaction that I think we generally agreed upon without speaking about it was that there was a silence that fell upon us. There's some experiences that we have. There are no words. Within were changed forever, as I said. So I continue to write. I was really encouraged to write and inspired to write my own music, mainly lyrics. But there came a time when I decided I wanted to, and I wanted to go to school and finish and see where I would do what I would do with myself. And I continued to work in music. I continued to perform every night, and music was always a part of my life. I'd say more recently I don't sing as much anymore, but I write a lot. I write a lot of poetry, I paint, so artwork really has been a major part of who I am, and I think it has also tended to inform my soul. I think that for me, I don't think I could be a psychoanalyst without the benefit of my artwork. There's something about writing, there's something about singing itself and, you know, your breathwork that you engage in and the meditative and contemplative aspects of it that actually set the stage for doing self-reflective work.
Paula: [00:14:30] Because just even a person who loves listening to music, we can still go into that reverie. One can still go into that state of quiet stillness. But then in that quiet stillness, there's this opportunity to listen to oneself, to listen more clearly to what you've experienced, and to capture something more, something deeper. But it really wasn't until I started, I decided I wanted to do my own psychoanalysis, that I really decided I was ready to first dive into me, to see more of who I was and what I was grappling with myself from. Years before that, I had not really worked through and through that process, I was, I felt, wow, this self analytic work, having the opportunity for someone to listen to me and at the same time that someone is listening to me intently, I can listen more intently to me. So it was this joining of knowing someone cared enough about my mind and heart and spirit, and would encourage me to elaborate on what I was thinking and feeling that I was able to do a lot of time and effort to recognize more about who I was and am, and to relax into my own skin. And it took a very long time. I still work on it every single day.
Eileen: [00:16:12] Music is a reverie, says Paula. It's a bare space, a canvas to dream and project and explore the depth of our emotions. It awakens a need that is with us from the start, the instinct to dive into our inner life and see through the mist. In this sense, music is a gateway to our psychology, which is why, as she pursued her studies, Paula held on to her passion for the art form itself. It gave her space to engage creatively, to contemplate and uncover feelings.
[00:16:51] Learned in early life.
Paula: [00:17:03] Now I have a back story about the study of psychology, and that is that my own mom had severe psychological problems, and she the fact that she would talk to me near the end of her life about that torture that she went through, also kind of converged with those experiences that I had in my travels and my music. So it was even though I had never decided, I didn't think I'd become a psychologist, I really didn't even occur to me, really, until I did do the this far away trips, and in particular the one in the Far East that all of it came together. There's something about the mind and the heart and human suffering. And then thinking of my mother's voice and her voice of telling me that her inner, the inner torture and the on and off again about it. I took that also with me because it kind of it has also informed my compassion and my my willingness to see all human beings as our gifts and as gifted. Because my mother was brilliant, she was absolutely the most smartest person I knew. But she had this psychological thing and deep depression. And I think I guess what we would say today is that she had a mood disorder. And so she informed my decision as well, even though by this time she had passed away. And I just decided that I when I came back from traveling a lot, I decided I was going to change my major to psychology and minor in to music.
Paula: [00:19:01] And I enjoyed City College so much, and I was encouraged tremendously, and I just ate up everything that was psychological, every the theories and the practices that I learned about and the community based work that I did. And one of the neat things was that I held on to my music. The wonderful man I married who was a musician, and we wrote together, um, one of my first, I'd say, community based experiences was at we call. It's called The Bridge, and it was a community mental health center. And one of the things my husband and I, my husband now, but my guy friend then, uh, did, was that we would go every single week to the community mental health center and do music with all of the residents. These residents were people who were living in single occupancy apartments in New York, in the areas of, you know, Harlem and the Upper West Side and maybe even the Bronx. And it just opened the residents up. They would come and we'd say, you know, they would have something ready to sing, and we would everyone would perform. And so it was an opportunity to combine music and psychology. And then for my undergraduate thesis, I developed a lab that studied the impact of music on the mind. And it really tried to look at how we're influenced subliminally. So I use certain lyrics and certain music, and then kind of tested people to see how they would respond to the music using a subliminal technique.
Eileen: [00:20:56] All of Paula's pieces fell into place, aligning naturally and beautifully together. Her travels and the emotional awakenings she brought back as souvenirs. The resonance of her mother's voice, sharing her own torment, an indelible mark on Paul's path. Romantic love found in serendipity and joined at the seam with music once more. And always this affinity for the arts, pushing her to experiment again and again. Beyond her creative talent, this is what is so special about Paula. She is unafraid to try a new ways to change the rhythm of her work. And across her career, she found the impulse to move from one therapeutic setting to the next. What a big shift to go from this passion to trauma, life altering events and disaster relief. Work into psychoanalysis. Can you say something more about what it means to be an analyst working one on one, of course, but obviously with an ongoing investment in group work? Yes. And disaster relief as well. Tell me.
Paula: [00:22:23] I had always wanted to do disaster mental health work, work with trauma because I had experienced first hand people living. Their lived experiences were all about trauma of one kind or another. And so I decided that I would take up a job with the clinical director of the Wayne State University PhD program. He had a clinic, and there was a flight that crash that happened in Detroit, late 80s, actually. And when the plane went down, I had wanted to get involved in this kind of work. So Jim Butcher, who is the creator of the MMPI, he was the main primary consultant for this airline. And he called my head clinical director and said, do you have anybody who's who can come work with me on this flight that went down where everyone was, everyone perished except one three year old child. I was able, as a little kind of young PhD, to get involved in doing disaster and trauma work with 3000 of the employees of this particular airline, and that really I learned so much. And that became the trajectory for a lot of the different kinds of not only individual work that I could do, but the group work that I did. And then I combined, as I became more of a psychoanalytically oriented therapist to my training, I became a part of the American Red cross, and I began to do nationwide kinds of disaster mental health work, and I was able to bring psychoanalytic formulation and ideas into the trainings I would do with social workers, psychiatrists, and so forth. I became a disaster mental health trainer for the Red cross. So there was this Red cross piece. There was my on ongoing consultations with businesses, various organizations that had crises of one kind or another. The United States Postal Service, that I actually worked there six years related to their shootings. And then it goes on that work.
Eileen: [00:25:03] Across this spectrum of experience, Paula found her way to group work, where attuning to trauma is even more complex. She took to the challenge and went looking for understanding in new dynamic ways and well, naturally brought her back to art.
Paula: [00:25:30] I really got involved in doing a fair amount of regular organizational consultation work to help people in leadership engage in understanding diversity. I actually did, I'd say, dynamically oriented consultations with leadership.
Eileen: [00:25:50] What made it dynamic?
Paula: [00:25:52] Well, first of all, I would always get called in because there was an issue, a crisis, and if there was a crisis around issues having to do with diversity or issues having to do with someone, a leader who's really very smart but also painfully aggressive with others, I'd get called in for that. So one of the things that I would do is I introduced the autobiographical self into the experiences with, you know, very crusty, usually all guys sitting around. A conference room table.
Eileen: [00:26:31] Saying, we're going to talk about feelings, boys.
Paula: [00:26:33] Yeah, we're going to talk about and, you know, and there would be the people who would say, I remember this very clearly. And, you know, they'd say, oh, the soft stuff. And I'd say, well, you know, okay, let's just do the soft stuff for a while and they'd like, kind of laugh. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I would actually get them to come in like I wherever I was, I would go initially for several days. So it gave me the opportunity to embed myself. And so I would invite them, for example, come in with anything you want. It could be a photograph, it could be a piece of jewelry, it could be a memory, something of memorabilia. And we're just going to we're just going to sit. And I just want to hear what you have to say. And by I cannot tell you these people and they were always men, right. Sitting around a table again. So I was the only woman again often who would, they'd suddenly say, oh my God, Joe, I never knew that about you. I didn't know you were into that. Oh my goodness. So how long did that happen? You mean you have been playing such and such and such for all these years, and I never knew it, you know, now I understand why you get so pissed off about such and such and such. So it was kind of a group process experience. And then I decided to bring my own artwork in like a Rorschach, and we used those for free associations. That allowed me to begin a process of helping people explore who they were and are in a wider way. So issues of culture came out naturally. Issues of belief systems came out naturally. The kinds of situations they were struggling with would come out naturally. And I always wanted to start with the at the top leadership, because I knew that if I worked with the top leadership, then I'd have some hopes of cascading whatever I was doing throughout the organization.
Eileen: [00:28:41] And you weren't intimidated?
Paula: [00:28:42] No, no, no, I wasn't. I don't know why, Eileen, I really don't. I don't know why I actually think about that.
Eileen: [00:28:52] Listen, the story here is just all about connection. Connection within connection. Without connection on both sides, you know, friends and enemies. Just really appreciating Paul. The richness of it, the organicness of it, but the expansiveness of it. You know, the psychoanalytic tradition is much more of a narrow one on one, even though it's a world of others inside ourselves. But I'm really appreciating, quite literally how you've been connecting and a connector, but I want to kind of move in and ask you a couple of things, like, how do you balance your own listening for the interior intrapsychic, as we call it, you know, inner world and the interpersonal, the between people. You tell me.
Paula: [00:29:44] I honestly, there's so many things I could say about this, but I think so much of it has to do with the artwork. Early exposure to sitting, standing and looking into the eyes of someone listening to me sing a gaze. It's a Winnicott, an idea of creating a space, creating a tone. You see, that's the connection it truly is. Just thinking about this now, I nearly always introduce the work I do analytically now in groups, as setting a tone doesn't. And that fits with music.
Eileen: [00:30:27] Ah yeah. Literally and figuratively.
Paula: [00:30:29] Literally. I didn't even think of that until now. That there's a sense of a tone, there's a sense of a holding environment, because that's what you do in an atmosphere, creating an atmosphere where we all can join and want to. And so that yearning to be fully present myself in my the most authentic way I can be at the time, even including my anxiety. I mean, I'll bring that up. I'll say, okay, this this is a big stage, or this is oh my, oh my goodness, I don't know what we're going to do with this one. But also recognizing that every single person I don't even I mean, I don't even know is having an experience their own unique experience.
Eileen: [00:31:26] And what a unique thought Paula offers as we close in on our time together. The idea of setting the tone is such a novel and insightful way to consider the space between speaker and listener. It calls to our humanity as patients and therapists, to what we sometimes feel as we come in full of our day, our moods, our judgments. And it asks us not that we forego who we are, but that we level with each other. In a way, this brings me back to our former guest, the eminent Nancy McWilliams, one of our best spokespersons, representing this thought that it's the relationship between therapist and patient that determines the outcome. In other words, it's up to us how we fit together, how we care to meet each other in the eye, present, alive and willing. Paula entered today's conversation in this very way present, alive and willing. I feel endeared and humbled to have witnessed it, and even more so grateful. Grateful for the way she brought us back to Vietnam in the seminal moment where she came face to face with the death of young men in battle and a seriously injured child, only to find real contact beyond words, age or cultural understanding. Her way of being in the world as an analyst can be read so differently with this lens. Take her sensitivity to suffering learned in youth and see how it informed this encounter. Notice Paula's awareness awakened in that moment and find it again. In all the work that came next, in community settings, in private practice, with individuals or with groups. Watch how she brought art in spaces where it wasn't expected, like the corporate world where the soft stuff is scoffed often and left untouched. Above all, remember then and now Paula connects with us through affinity. And in doing so, she extends an invitation. To open up. To join in. To share. To listen for the music and to trust our creativity. What a treat! I thank her yet again for her generosity, for joining me in this podcast, and I leave you now with this one final gift.
Paula: [00:34:28] I peeked in to say good night and I heard my child in prayer. Lovely ribbons. Scarlet ribbons. Lovely ribbons for her hair. Through the night. My heart was breaking. Until the dawn was breaking. I peeked in to say good night. And I could see scarlet ribbons. Just those ribbons for her hand.
Eileen: [00:35:43] Oh! Oh, Paula. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're welcome. This has been the art of listening again. My name is Eileen Dunn. Please join us for our next episode as we continue to dive into the space between speaker and listener. You can follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, if you enjoyed the show, please leave a review and a five star rating. It helps us to grow so that we can keep bringing you new conversations. And we'll see you the next time.
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