By Teresa Rose, Ph.D.
Pondering what it means to be a psychoanalytic psychotherapist has prompted a great deal of free association and deep thinking. It touches me in many profound ways, and to try and tease out the meanings has been a challenge, albeit an exciting one. Overall, my analytic identity is so tightly entwined with my personality that it is hard to separate them. The more I learn and study, the more I apply analytic concepts to most aspects of my life, not just in my practice. In fact it is impossible not to do so. Writing about this topic, I found it difficult to focus on any one area of my life, so I gave up, and embraced all the ways it affects me.
I am a new psychoanalytic candidate as of 2003, although I have had 2 years of prior analytic training, over two years of analytic supervision, and some years of analysis. The formal four year training program is the next logical and eagerly met step. I have been analytically oriented for some time, and thinking back, was primed for that since early childhood. I was always a curious kid, wanting to know why, how does that work, what's the root cause, what is the real reason for that, why do people do what they do, why do people keep repeating things over and over. I recall a great deal of confusion growing up when people stated conflicts or ideas in reified black and white. Everything always felt complex, multi-layered, and gray to and kept me asking all those "why" questions. Those questions have been an endless source of fascination for years, and psychoanalysis is a perfect fit. In fact, I'm still awed and delighted that people will pay me to do what I love the most, for it doesn't feel like work very often, even after 9 years of doing therapy with people. As someone once said, I get to live a dangerous and exciting life without ever leaving my consulting room. What could be better than that!
As I mulled over the topic of life as an analytic therapist, I realized I had been contemplating the death instinct, as it applies socio-politically prior to the announcement of the contest. Even though this concept was one of Freud's more unpopular ones, it is hard for me not to believe in the death instinct as I watch and as I am traumatized by world events, such as 9/11. And the death instinct hardly seems exhaustive enough to explain all of the events and dynamics occurring in the world. Basic schizoid mechanisms seem to be rampant in the 2000's.
To watch as this country's president demonizes people, and ruins or severely damages relationships in the world, or even in our country, that have heretofore been strong has left me reeling. It is too easy to want to cast him in a flat, similar two-dimensional way in return, but viewing him through a paranoid schizoid lens says something about how he could lead the country into a war that many of us vehemently disagreed with. If everything is viewed as a part object, only a small leap is required to demonize people, cultures, and countries. And death and destruction unfortunately sometimes easily follow. It's also hard not to analyze the president in terms of his father, and the notion that he is carrying the "banner of loyalty" as Peter Shabad so eloquently describes. The war in Iraq to me always felt a pre-determined, personal battle of the president's that was going to be carried out, no matter what, no matter what the cost. The scariest thing about all of that for me is that the president's personal psychodynamics can be acted out on such a grand and terrifying scale. Of course that is true of any person that wields such enormous power and controls vast resources. Viewing politics and social situations through an analytic eye provides some small comfort that comes with understanding, but little comfort as I watch tragedies unfold.
On a level closer to home, I almost find it impossible now to experience people close to me without considering their psychodynamics, their attachment histories and their internal workings. Sometimes it almost plagues me—I wish to not know or to guess certain things, but I can't shut it off. As someone I'm very close to said, it is almost this feeling that I'm a superhero action figure with magical seeing powers. Even though it sounds and feels like my own omnipotent fantasy, being psychoanalytically informed means that I have a huge range of possible theories and explanations available to me about why someone might be the way they are or might do the things they do. The more I learn, the more I come up with theories, hypotheses and multiple reasons for people's beliefs and actions. I find myself even applying analytic concepts to me and my dog! Even though that feels a bit silly at times, it highlights for me how much psychoanalysis forms a large part of my self-identity.
My psychoanalytic identity has recently begun to coalesce around an intense need to make analysis available to a much larger audience. One of my struggles with psychoanalysis as a profession has been that we have done the public a disservice by not making it more understandable, accessible, and touchable. Because of its often insular, and mysterious reputation, many people have no clue that analysis is still a very viable and useful process. One of the ways I'm invested in analysis is to try and help get the word out—it's a wonderful, comprehensive treatment that can address deep, long-entrenched issues like nothing else can. I've been somewhat amused at my fervor, for it truly feels like a mission. However, as we analytic folks say, knowing that keeps me tempered. The wonderful thing is that I'm afforded several opportunities to educate people about analysis, and I hope I'm doing it in a considered, balanced way.
One of the most exciting ways I'm informing people is by writing a weekly column called Relationship Matters for a suburban newspaper. It has been an outstanding opportunity to take many concepts and ideas psychoanalysts take for granted, and to distill them into a form that reaches a wide audience. Even though many of my columns are specifically about relationship concerns, such as communication, romance, vulnerability, and intimacy, I'm in the process of completing 3 columns on therapy—the therapy relationship, the process of change (which of course I describe in analytic terms), and what kind of therapist and therapy to choose. As you might imagine, psychoanalysts top the list as the most trained, informed professionals available for psychotherapy. I know I'm biased, but I believe that to be true. In fact, most other mental health professionals often choose a psychoanalyst as their own therapist when they seek treatment. I feel it is critically important in this day and age of managed care and intrusion into the therapy relationship that people really understand all their options, particularly such a human one as psychoanalysis. I'm fortunate enough to have found a public forum, an understanding and supportive editor, and a way to present the profession in a credible way.
Another way I feel compelled to educate people regarding psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is by teaching in two adjunct faculty positions. Given that psychotherapy is so important to me, teaching graduate school in doctoral and masters level Counseling Psychology programs enables me to consider and to communicate my experiences and my understanding to my students. I continue to be horrified that students believe psychoanalysis stopped with Freud, that it's a dead, dusty, historical anachronism. In my own graduate school training, psychoanalysis was presented in a just such a way. That is so far from the truth, even in the Midwest! It is an unfortunate occurrence in many graduate schools, but there are ways to engage students in learning about such an active and vital discipline. It is a delight when you find a student that resonates with all that psychoanalysis has to offer. The future of our profession hinges on finding just such students.
Finally, as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I feel like I have truly found my professional home in the psychoanalytic community. Analysts I know have been highly supportive of me and other developing therapists. When most of the world seems to be chasing quick fixes, medical solutions, and manualized treatments, connecting with a group of people that still believes utterly in the search for meaning and value has nurtured me. I so strongly believe in the worth, dignity and value of the individual life, and the search to integrate and live that life, especially in relationship with others, in as full a way as possible. No matter what theoretical orientation feels congruent to a psychoanalyst, the underpinnings seem to be that search for meaning, understanding, connection and love. It is an honor to be a small part of that. The rest of my life stretches ahead of me as an exciting journey, greatly informed by psychoanalysis. I truly feel I'm living large because of it.
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