I don't believe that spouses must to be totally open to one another about their every thought and feeling. On the other hand, if she is a kind and loving person on the outside but has a lot of inner, darker thoughts (and it's not clear to me if this is an ongoing issue or if these really are only old discarded thoughts from the past), the LW might consider sharing some of them with her husband directly rather than leaving them on her laptop to be casually discovered. This will help her avoid the danger of becoming passive aggressive and will also open up a new side of herself to her partner, one that she may think is only suited to the dark recesses of secret space but may actually be what makes her the complex and wonderful person she is. Out of such darkness are interesting and sustainable marriages forged.

Also, if you need to password-protect your journal from your spouse because you can't trust him or her to keep out once you've requested that it stay confidential, that's a problem. If you need to password-protect your journal from your spouse because you are afraid he or she will find you unlovable based on the ugly thoughts that occasionally pass through your head and out your pen, that's a problem. If, on the other hand, you need to password-protect your journal in order to create for yourself some sacred space to call your own, there's nothing wrong with that. Who doesn't occassionally need a break from being an open book to other human beings?

What! the! heck! was! up! with! that?!

How interesting that so many of us heard "I did it" instead of "I get it," when (upon review) it seems clear that he said "get," not "did." That so many of us misheard it seems to say something about our reactions to Chris' death (and all the deaths that came before it, especially Adriana's) -- on some level we want to see someone take responsibility for it. We are pained just watching the denial descend once more. And I do think denial is the right word -- Tony may not be denying the facts of the situation to himself, but he sure as hell is denying the emotional and moral reality that follows from those facts.

As for the issue of the effectiveness of therapy, I agree that part of what we are learning is that evil is not something that can be cured, at least not unless the person who has chosen to do evil chooses to truly face that evil, process it, and risk everything to change. That Tony cannot tell Melfi what really happened speaks to the severe limitations he has imposed on the therapeutic process in order to protect what he can't stand to lose: his legal freedom and his wealth. Time after time, the two of them are stuck talking around the issue. They can't really explore the core of Tony's ongoing pain (which is his own actions, not the actions of his Narcissistic mother or Sociopathic father), so Tony remains in that pain and feels rage at his therapist for not showing him a magical shortcut.

I actually think that the therapist Carmella saw ever-so-briefly, who told her bluntly that she was living off of blood money and could never free herself of guilt until she gave it all up to redeem herself, was actually the better therapist. He was direct, bluntly honest, and challenged her to make the tough choices necessary to truly find peace and freedom. He was not willing to lie to her about the path she would have to take if she wanted therapy to work for her. Melfi has chosen instead to assist Tony in his game of denial. She knows it, and Tony knows it. Their work has been nothing but a waiting game and now they are both running out of patience, realizing that the thing they are waiting for -- Tony's break into honesty -- will never ever come.

I think Petrarch is close to dead on about Tony's motivation for killing Christopher. That issue of the child seat, the implications that Christopher is irresponsible and would endanger his child -- that is what weighed most heavily on Tony in the seconds after the accident and then the days following Christopher's death. His awkward repetition of the story to various mourners was an attempt to explain himself. I don't think, however, that he saw the babyseat and killed Christopher because he viewed him as a failed patriarch. I think he killed Christopher because on some level Tony feels himself to be that endangered child. The connection to Livia's constant threats about killing her children really ties it together: in the moments after the accident, Tony's suspicion that Chris was a threat had the added emotional resonance of his experiences as a frightened child who was literally threatened by everyone he might have loved. Chris wasn't his metaphorical son at that moment -- he was a stand-in for every adult who frightened and disappointed Tony when he was a helpless child. This also speaks to how ultimately helpless Tony feels himself to be even as an adult.

Also, I would not assume, just because Tony shouted "I get it" while on Peyote, that he actually had some type of spiritual epiphany. He undoubtedly knows that this is what one is supposed to do while tripping in the desert, and just as he had to put on the "long face" to act normal at Chris' wake, he got his God on for the duration of his hallucinogenic trip. He was going through the motions just as much with the Peyote as ever. More "comfortably numb" than existentially inspired.