Allan Tegg

WELCOME TO MY PAGE

Fifteen years ago, a Jewish patisserie owner in St Kilda, Melbourne, introduced me to cake psychology. He explained, “Biscuits are rarely bought spontaneously and should never be placed in a prominent position. Those who want them, find them.”

That discussion inspired my novel, The Interpretation of Cakes, which recorded the rise and fall of Cake-analysis, as practiced by Isaak Brodsky, a baker in Budapest at the beginning of last century.

Writing the book became an exercise in free association; from St Kilda to Budapest, from the cake purchase to the analytic couch. Where Sigmund Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is an exploration in how psychoanalytic thinking helps us understand the world, The Interpretation of Cakes is an exploration of how everyday life helps us understand psychoanalysis (or psychotherapy).

In this blog, psychotherapy will be considered through the metaphor of popular culture - particularly rock and roll, television and film.

Like the seemingly innocent act of eating a Dobos Torte in St Kilda, I’m going to take a bite and see where it leads.

There has already been some payback. A link has been created between my current emotional world, and the very different emotional life of my childhood in an outer suburb of Newcastle, NSW.

All those old passions - cricket, football, Shintarō and the Beatles - have sprung back to life. Right now, Paul McCartney’s Fool on the Hill, is playing in my head. It will be the theme song for this blog.