Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

by Tao Lin

In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy a 23–year–old person attempts to explain to himself the possible origins, ends, and cures of anger, worry, despair, obsession, and confusion, while concurrently experiencing those things in various contexts including a romantic relationship, a book of poetry, and the arbitrary nature of the universe.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Psychology, The United States Of America, American, Mental Health, Contemporary

102 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Tao Lin is the author of the novels Leave Society, Taipei, Richard Yates, and Eeeee Eee Eeee; the memoir Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change; and the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, among other books. He posts on Substack and lives in Hawaii.

Reviews

[Megan Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at a Barnes & Noble in 2007, a few days after reading "Bed" and looking at Tao Lin's blog. My dad and I sat in the parking lot looking at/reading what we bought. The book is pink and feels `sleek' and I had a weird feeling that it might contain sexual things I would want to `guard' from my dad's vision, while also knowing that it probably wouldn't contain sexual things. I have referenced the first poem, "i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know," in 3 `mission statement'-like papers (a poetry class, an ethics class, and contemporary philosophy). I read it aloud at the beginning of a poetry workshop I was `leading' once and the members of the workshop, mostly older jobless women who wanted to write mystery novels, looked at me confusedly at the end.

I think I enjoy "CBT" so much because it feels like the extremely well documented thoughts of a person observing himself in the world and struggling to determine what it means to exist in an arbitrary-seeming universe while simultaneously having feelings and preferences that seem necessary to write down. I like that there were lines that felt like non-sequiturs. It makes sense to me that a person who feels and thinks these kinds of things about existence would pay attention to non-sequitur thoughts, because they seem to have a neutral value/happen spontaneously, and are maybe `grounding' or `important' to write down because of that. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is, from my experience, a process of analyzing what things I think/do are `irrational' and what are `helpful' and trying to encourage `helpful' patterns of thinking to aid behavior. Seems like this book is a physical attempt at something like that. A lot of the poems have lines featuring a non-specific, vaguely romantic-seeming "you" (i.e. "the secret of life is that i miss you, and this describes life"). I like that. It made me feel like the person writing the book wanted to connect with other people.

[Alan]

A decent encapsulation of the 21st Century male, specifically in the early 2000s. The proliferation of technology and the stagnation of the processes with your brain. Lin uses the hamster as an analogy for living in the West, and he tosses in plenty of mottos taken wholesale from CBT therapists.

I particularly enjoyed these poems:

-the power of ethical reasoning
-a stoic philosophy based on the scientific fact that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors

[Holly Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this in a park and then got kind of mugged. Overall it was still a pretty good day, because Tao Lin is a pretty good poet.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book and I thought it was even better than his first poetry book, which was also good. I like books that make me feel more lonely than I already am, but in some smart way. I read a lot of these poems more than once and I just think Tao Lin is really intellegent but doesn't smear it all over his poetry. Down-to-earth-hamster-book.

[tao_lin3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book. I can read this book in any mood and enjoy it, I think.
The words all have meaning that my brain can process. After I read the words I feel emotions. Each poem makes me feel emotion.

I will read this again later on and probably more times later on.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not yet convinced by Lin's work, or his group of writers, either, so far. Michelle Tea, Jenny Zhang. Eh. How to understand him? People sometimes say Lydia Davis? But I love Lydia Davis, son, and you're no Lydia Davis. And some people reference Raymond Carver?! Not remotely close, seems to me. Richard Yates? Lin has a book by that title. "Tao Lin is a Kafka for the iPhone generation." Really? Kafka? But iPhone generation, yep!

So what is this sort of blog poetry stream about? The iidentification and exploration of psychological states, such as anger, worry, depression, despair, maybe, but instead of depressed Gregory turning into a cockroach, it's now a… depressed hamster? Ha! Well, maybe that's what's going on, but from the very first moment I engaged with Kafka I was thrilled (both haunted and amused) and this ain't happening with Lin for me yet. A lot of people feel amused by him and I can see that, the fact of just writing down all the mundanity of existence.

If you are twenty something you may like this a lot, feel like it is relatable, abut if it is not exactly slackerish, it is about being lost and apolitical and floating. I know that the depressed hamsters are supposed to be more than depressed hamsters. But sometimes a depressed hamster is just a depressed hamster and I don't have to work to make that significant. Uh, unless the narrator is seen as this comically uninteresting iPhone generation guy, and then it is like, a portrait of the new lost generation? Well, maybe, if you are generous.

This is, as far as I can tell, absurdist poetry with some lyricism in some very few places. But "revolutionary" as one reviewer put it?! Nah...

[Melville House Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I hope this new publisher uses my blurb this time. I was a little sad that the other one didn't use it. And it was really funny. At least I thought it was. They could have sold tens of copies if they'd put my blurb on that book. How else do people know that the book is any good? No one can actually concentrate in a book store Because their feet hurt. So that is where I come in: I say that these poems are serious and funny and more than they appear. I am a big fan of Tao Lin's writing and this book makes me happy." -- Matthew Rohrer

[mikayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this book. I've read it probably over 15 times.

[Kara Brightmeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

yesterday morning/afternoon i re-read "cognitive-behavioral therapy" in my backyard and forgot about the sun and now i am really red all over, but that's okay, because as the sun burned me it felt really hot and good and the book caused me to have thoughts about the sun being a star and the speed of light and the passing of time and my body in space and the origin of the universe and stuff like that.

reading it this time made me notice new things, or maybe they were things i had read but forgotten so much that it felt like i was noticing them for the first time (the book influenced me to think that, i think, and other thoughts like that). the first time i read it, i mostly got the sense that "here is a person who doesn't know why they exist or why anything exists but they are observing patterns and deciding the universe is arbitrary but mysteriously functional, that is like what this person thinks their existence is like too, the universe and this person are always changing because choices keep appearing in front of them and something mysterious and functional in this person makes them want to make choices in the same way the universe 'decided' to start working, because of that this person wants to inflict the least amount of pain/suffering on others because others seem to have caused pain/suffering in this person, this person wants more from the universe because it seems like the nature of the universe was easy for them to figure out, but this person actually isn't sure of anything, really."

i feel like it would've taken me significantly longer to write what i just wrote after reading "cognitive-behavioral therapy" the first time. maybe i liked it more now or maybe i am older or smarter or maybe more confused and i have no idea what i'm talking about. the most interesting thing about this book to me is that it seems like there are 8 major aspects "churning" throughout it, sort of like an expanding, self-generating motor for a self-generated book (which references itself as a book). i might not be making sense right now. here is what i think happens in the book (not always in this order):

1. tao lin is in a body controlled by his thoughts, he is in a body in relation to other bodies, he can control his thoughts and his body with substances and has preferences for round/wet/shiny things
2. tao lin is writing down his thoughts (which sometimes include things about his relationship, feeling bad, non-sequiturs, [other])
3. tao lin is entertaining himself by writing his thoughts as if they were a narrative where he is a hamster interacting with homeless hamsters and an ugly fish witnessing violence in the sea
4. tao lin is writing a philosophical treatise and not saying "i" as much
5. tao lin is writing about his thoughts again, but now since he has written down all of these other things and experienced the accumulation of everything in his life which caused him to think these things and want to write in the first place, the most interesting thing to be aware of is that he is a person writing a poem because earlier he decided "i'm going to write a poem now" (and as this happens, presumably other thoughts are already forming in his brain on a purely experiential level and therefore not yet "ready" to articulate, but they are probably geared towards achieving the next level of awareness/"meta"-ness/"thing to focus on"/"thing to make life more interesting")
6. tao lin doesn't know why he's doing any of this
7. tao lin knows exactly why he's doing all of this
8. tao lin wants to remain calm

i had the most fun reading "cognitive-behavioral therapy" this time. now i feel like this is the most fun to read of any of tao lin's books. it provided me with both a constant stream of interesting thoughts (which seem satisfying to be able to hold in a physical collection, like i feel anxious thinking about what it would be like if all of these interesting things just flashed and disappeared in someone's brain and were never written down) and produced interesting thoughts in me. sometimes i felt moved and like if i were reciting a poem to my mom i would probably have to pause to "collect myself." i also probably made insane faces sometimes. sometimes i laughed out loud. here is a part where i laughed out loud (in the poem "room night"):

"a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really
it was just the hole that's in the middle
of all bagels; 'i need to go read my blog
to find out what my politics are'"

the funniest part to me was the line break after "really"...that's the part where i laughed...

[Nick Ziegler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tao Lin is someone I wouldn’t want to be who writes books I wouldn’t want to write, and I find his work compelling. Having previously read only two of his prose works (Shoplifting… and Taipei) and browsed his YouTube oeuvre, he stood as something of a negative example, an embodiment of the pitfalls writers in what I’m tempted to call our generation (but really a certain subset of people; few of us are Brooklynite scions of LASIK-stature fortunes) might be snared by. Self-deprecatingly narcissistic, emphatically apolitical, both clever and unmannered in an anything-goes way, an approach in which any detail is admissible to the work, with a slight preference for the disarmingly mundane or non-sequitur. Self-referentiality less thematized than obligatory. Lin’s books profess a congenital inability to successfully navigate any intersubjective situation, whether that’s reading a face (faces which frequently fail to betray the often oxymoronic emotions Lin ascribes to their owners), maintaining a romantic relationship, or give a reading of the work that, we sense, comforts Lin because the reader cannot easily talk back (though I do not read his blogging, and I could be wrong).

Lin’s diet (in this book, vegan, though he isn’t any longer) and more-ethical consumption are frequent items of mention in his work – partly because his work is about the mundane. These, in his prose works, struck me to function as value-neutral markers of class, location, identity and so on rather than as positive commitments to any social project. However, in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Lin movingly interrogates his own relationship to politics, and his failure to make it a subject of his life or art. In “room night,” his best poem about this issue, he signifies his inability to sustain enthusiasm for the social by writing “‘i need to go read my blog/to find out what my politics are’”. Elsewhere, he offers something of an apologia for his art:

“The hamster sometimes thought about war, politics, globalization, and world trade but mostly about things like death, writing, existence, loneliness, and meaninglessness that to it often preempted — despite its philosophy regarding the value of life—economy, capitalism, society, and materialism.”

Like his inability to read faces, the subjects of his writing are congenital, an ill-functioning human struggling under the burden of the “unidirectional nature of time.”


The title refers to Lin’s strange mix of Skinnerism and ascetic ideals (Buddhism and Stoicism particularly). Connected with this is a vague concern with animal issues and only shoplifting from publicly traded corporations. We wonder, with his abandonment of veganism, if this ‘cognitive-behavioral therapy’ is likewise a momentary enthusiasm, whether inertia necessarily drags Lin into the destructive, amoral, self-serving-and-self-abusing habits portrayed in his latest work.

This book of poetry, though, is seasoned with moments of generosity of spirit, even of hope and faith in the Others Lin is incapable of connecting with:

“in our time of suffering my poetry will remain calm/and indifferent – something to look forward to/innate in all taco bell patrons is the possibility/of phenomenal poetry – something to look forward to”

It’s impossible to consider Lin’s art without considering Lin. He invites this convolution both in his art and in his public behavior. He welcomes (even if he only wryly responds to) tabloidic, invasive personal questions. He plays pranks on publishers and audiences just as his poetic stunts toy with readers.

Lin is an interesting figure in American letters; let’s hope there aren’t any others like him.

(If we judge from the omnipresent attempts on Amazon of reviewers imitating him while praising him, there won't be. Tao Lin has genuine chops, or at least persistence).

[Anselm · Rating 4 out of 5]

You would think it would be easier to be a pure consumer of toxins and make it work, in the Tim Gunn sense.....or be a pure swo-sound: swoah! as in sword, and have a seltzer-like freedom within plastic outside of the bogus traps (as opposed to real traps) represented by such things as my-throwback-art-project-lets-me-type-up-you-and-be-paid-to-be-me. Anyway, I'm sorry only that I'm not irresponsible enough to piss the virtues of this book. It's four stars are nowhere near one another. And that helps. And if you really want to cruise this book, read Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy at the same time. The internet wishes it could visit you in prison to berate you for your lack of commitment to Fortune, to your blood propagating, agh, verily, and shit.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry/prose. Typically depressive, organic vegan hipster shoplifter, self-righteous, utilizing cute animals as surrogates. I particularly like the “ugly fish” poems. Here are thoughts I had about how Lin’s poetry succeeds:

-Uses cute animals or celebrities as surrogates for himself to avoid “I”
-jumps out of the narrative to reference himself as the author -- stage -aside or The Office documentary effect
-Repeats the same few elements throughout poems, with sense of culmination or crescendo in last section of the collection

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

In painting, there's an old argument that painting is dead, and the fact that it's an old argument probably means its a pointless one. You'd think it'd be much easier arguing that poetry is dead, but Tao Lin makes that argument pointless too.
His poetry passes by slacker-era irony and self-indulgent formalism to dig up something deeper and more human, even when that soemthing seems on first reading to merely be depressed hamsters.

[Marie Ant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to look at this book. It has a nice cover and nice pages. I like all the poems in it. My favorite poem is "Ugly Fish." Although my all time favorite poem by Tao Lin is "The MFA in Hamsters," which you can find if you google it. I have an MFA in Hamsters from Naropa. Everyone there would like Tao Lin, I think.

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked reading this. It is perfect if you are a semi-recent college graduate, 23 years old, feeling severely disillusioned and direction-less and alone. Two years ago I would have been too ambitious to like these poems, I think.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone"

<3 <3 <3

[carmen! · Rating 4 out of 5]

there were a lot of good parts of these poems

[Melting Uncle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“i want to be remembered as a flying toad
an intelligent, winged toad the size of an ant
but i don’t think that’s going to happen”

Accessible funny poetry published by the charismatic Tao Lin when he was 25
It would be easy to criticize this poetry as too cute, ironic, or not serious/literary enough
I felt compelled by its weirdness, humor, and originality
The poems overlay self-examination, psychology and autobiography with talking animals, headbutting, and references to Lord of the Rings
Like in Tao Lin’s other books, there’s a surface of banality and disinterestedness that hides intelligence, melancholy, and a desire to understand the problems of the world

“i poured my smoothie on your mother’s face
as a rhetorical tactic in support of veganism”

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

You might find his vocabulary jarringly limited and his subject matter self-obsessed, but it's all for a purpose. Most of the things Tao Lin rights are just so unavoidably true. And it's not the big universal truths. It's the little ones held tight by your everyday thoughts, that you might not see as you discard them by the bushel. Tao Lin lets you know it's ok to be overwhelmed by the beauty of Taco Bell or the pathos of an imaginary hamster. Why not value a can of redbull the same way you might cherish a beautiful sunset?

"we hacve our undesirable situations whether we are upset about them or not / if we are upset about our problems we have two problems: the problem / and our being upset about it" (46)

"Bruce Lee is a rare species of hard-muscled hamster capable of insane destruction." (63)

"in 1952 a DSM copy-editor removed 'headbutting' from the entry for psychopathic behavior / thereafter the headbutt has thrived across all social, political, and elementary school gym classes" (90)

"innate in all taco bell patrons is the possibility of phenomenal poetry" (91)

-

"when I leave this place" (67)

the distances i have described in my poems
will expand to find me
but they will never find me

when my head touches your head
your face hits my face at the speed of light

holding it a little

i want to cross an enormous distance with you
to learn the wisdom of lonely animals with low IQs
i want to remember you as a river
with a flower on it

i'll be right back

[Christine Ditzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up a copy of this book at the Brooklyn Book Festival after hearing my friend Hannah talking about Tao Lin’s work both to me and a few people at the Melville House booth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect; I’ve never been much of a poetry fan, although there are a few exceptions. Tao Lin’s Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is now one of them.

I have read this book, Lin’s second published collection of poetry (I have yet to read the first), twice now. The first time I read it through, I took my time, trying to let myself absorb each poem and really let them sink in. This was incredibly difficult, because I was hooked from the very first poem (i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know), and wanted to read the rest right then and there. I managed to stop myself, though, and allowed myself to take my time in reading them so that it took me a week to finish the collection. I didn’t bother taking my time with the second reading, and it gave me a different experience, but the end result was the same: I want to read more of Lin’s work.

You can read the rest of my review at my blog: http://readerlymusings.com/2013/09/30...

[Brent Woo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This just sings to me. The main character [hamster?] is a kind of creative, inward-type, constantly suffering personal crises, doubting itself. This is the same vein of "writers writing about how depressing writing can be", so if you like commiserating with that then this is for you. I read this on Kindle and I highlighted something on every other page, at least. So many times I just had to exclaim (inwardly of course), "he gets it! yep. that's me."

Some choice quotes:

"a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really / it was just the hole that's in the middle / of all bagels; 'i need to go read my blog to find out what my politics are'"


"the hamster feels sarcastic"

"in this situation the hamster can neutralize itself by becoming severely depressed or cripplingly lonely, or by reading books about severe depression or crippling loneliness written by other hamsters to console themselves against those things."

"my internal monologue is five pages long"

"the question of 'how to live' reverberated throughout taco bell [...] innate in all taco bell patrons is the possibility / of phenomenal poetry -- something to look forward to"

"i am learning to control my anger / by crushing it with a different species of anger / important from the plains of new zealand"

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't have the most complete frame of reference to talk about poetry, but I can say I enjoyed this collection from beginning to end. It is the opposite of flowery, which made it accessible to me, but it is always searching, sometimes brooding, and often funny. Tao Lin covers his topics without melodrama, and in plainspoken prose. This is the poetic realization of my own personal philosophy of smart people transcending the limitations of the word "smart." Tao Lin is a genius, but he doesn't feel obligated to act it.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing contemporary poet, Tao Lin maintains a delicate balance between the seriously unique concreteness and the relatable abstract feelings resonating from his displays of loneliness, boredom, and confusion within his work. His sense of subtle humor shines throughout this personal collection, noticeable mostly through his specific object choices. In this way, Lin has taught me the importance of choosing details carefully as a writer���ones that are unique in a way that catches attention, sparks interest or curiosity, and reiterates a larger theme.

[Always Becominging · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that this book has a pink cover. I enjoyed the animals and how they wallowed in depression despite an awareness of the processes of CBT. I liked the sense of logic. I liked how the book was broken into sections sometimes in the middle of a poem. I didn't enjoy when Tao broke the fourth wall. He didn't do it in a very interesting way. There were some particularly strong/resonant lines near the end of the book

[Brian Foley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this in the mail yesterday. Tao's poetry worked a little more for me than his fiction. I'm not a big fan of his style, yet I read the whole thing in an afternoon, so that must mean something effective is happening.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is maybe not as tight or awesome as e.e.e. or bed (which is still my fav) but it is very original and hilarious. the best parts in the book are on pages 14, 44-45, and 68-75.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reviewed this for Coldfront, so if you'd like to see it follow this link: Click Right Here!

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is great! The poem about a depressed vegan hamster clutching a sesame bagel and listening to music by depressed vegans was incredible.

[Jehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It makes you stop and read because it's like watching a car, going at normal speed, crash. Or because it's as uncomfortable/comfortable as a moment of awkward silence.

[Zoomusicguy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always brilliant, Tao Lin is the superstar of underachieving vegan shoplifters whose lives are in a constant state of existential crisis. This is the poetry for the new millennium of apathetic youth.