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Joni Mitchell and the ‘Me’ decade | Ann Powers
An extract from new book Travelling follows the Canadian songwriter’s restless adventures in psychoanalysis and psychedelia from Hejira to Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
‘I am returning to myself / These things that you and I suppressed.” Photograph: Jeff Goode/Toronto Star/Getty ImagesWith the language of psychotherapy permeating everything from novels (Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying) to films (Annie Hall) to prime-time sitcoms (The Bob Newhart Show), music followed suit. Urged by guitarist Robben Ford’s wife to seek out the guidance of the Tibetan sage Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche – a guru as popular among Hollywood habitués as the psychoanalyst Grotjahn had once been – Mitchell had a confrontational encounter with the monk that, according to her, put her into a three-day state of what Buddhists call satori, or no-mind. Overshadowed by the medicalisation of mental health and the mainstreaming of New Age self-help movements, psychotherapy remained an important tool and Freud’s talking cure a historical touchstone, but no longer was it a definitive force within Americans’ understanding of their inner lives.
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