I recently visited the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I must admit I did cry. I don't know if it was the hushed reverence of the small and eager crowd? Maybe it was the idea that a group of people had cooperated over many years across countries and continents to bring these pictures together. What an act of cultural cooperation! It could have been the modest and sympathetic way that the paintings had been hung,a few in each room, with just a bit of text. Or was it the fact we were now able to travel and see things in the world rather than stare at four walls of our homes. Perhaps it was the memory of my art teacher Mr Bland in his green coat who was a radical figure in my imagination. In seeing this exhibition I was continuing something started by him.

In truth, I will never know what led to that emotion. All I know is that a little cry is a good harbinger in middle age. It usually means it's going to be a good day.

Indeed, my heightened emotional state meant that every brush stroke, every scene had an intensity. It wasn't the intensity of the 8k TV sets in the John Lewis show rooms. No. It was a lo-fi intensity.

Vermeer only painted around 40 pictures in his life. Most of them took around 3-6 months to paint. They general focussed on the ordinary. Interiors, individuals and small groups. They made me think of my consulting rooms. I spend a lot of time in inner worlds of my patients set in the interior of the same room, the same setting. Through the regular and continuous use of the same setting certain thoughts and feelings arise. The setting is taken for granted. It's only when a piece of furniture is moved, or the clock malfunctions, that the room intrudes into the present. I don't have a problem with therapy in the outdoors, but it's surely different to the indoor variety. The ordinary room, provides a literal and symbolic container for the mind of the therapist and the patient.

Vermeer resonated with me because he understood the vital significance of the room. He lavished such care and attention on his depictions of these every day spaces. He made the ordinary extraordinary and perhaps, once in a while, that also happens in the analytic encounter