40 Years in Psychoanalysis

This from a gal who spent 40 years in psychoanalysis:

(My Shrunk Life by Daphne Merkin, NY Times, Aug. 8, 2010m Magazine Section
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08Psychoanalysis-t.html )

“To this day, I’m not sure that I am in possession of substantially greater self-knowledge than someone who has never been inside a therapist’s office. What I do know, aside from the fact that the unconscious plays strange tricks and that the past stalks the present in ways we can’t begin to imagine, is a certain language, a certain style of thinking that, in its capacity for reframing your life story, becomes — how should I put this? — addictive. Projection. Repression. Acting out. Defenses. Secondary compensation. Transference. Even in these quick-fix, medicated times, when people are more likely to look to Wellbutrin and life coaches than to the mystique-surrounded, intangible promise of psychoanalysis, these words speak to me with all the charged power of poetry, scattering light into opaque depths, interpreting that which lies beneath awareness. Whether they do so rightly or wrongly is almost beside the point."


You know why it is beside the point? Because all that is beside the point; the point being I need a mommy and a loving daddy and I will pay money every week to get one, even a faux one. Learning a new way to see your life story is not therapy; it is reorientation toward the same neurosis. Jungians do it, Freudians do it, Cognitivists do it, “Let’s fall in love.” Does anyone else see the insanity of forty years of therapy? I see it often when parents who do not want to be bothered loving their child send her out to be repaired like a broken vacuum cleaner. “If you want love, go there; only don’t bother me.” And the repairman says, "let’s look at your life through my eyes.” Oh yes, let’s not feel the pain of it all; just look at it differently. "And don’t you do the interpreting; come to me for decades and let me do it." Such narcissism. Such arrogance. "I know best". "And I even know best what lies in your unconscious". "I know what feelings your hiding even at the age of two".

The first lesson I give students is to never think you know what the patient is feeling; you will be wrong. Only he knows and only he will give up from his unconscious when the time is right. It is the patient’s symptom, his behavior and his feelings. They belong to him and no one else. They are buried in the unconscious for a good reason; they are not ready to be felt. The patient knows when, and it is precisely when he can fully experience it and not before. It is his timetable, not ours because it is his life, not ours. So where do we therapists get off telling him or her what the problem is, where the lack of love is and how it all happened.


It is the same old neurologic mistake, believing that words and beliefs can change feelings, when all of evolution and the structure of the brain dictates otherwise. It is feelings that are the more powerful, that give rise to beliefs that may indeed counter those feelings, and the person then believes those beliefs and defends them because they defend him.


Daphne mentions transference. The Freudians are still analyzing transference when it should be obvious that instead of explaining how the patient is transferring feelings from daddy onto him, that she needs to express those needs to daddy; to cry, scream and beg for love where it belongs; then we do not have to analyze any transference. Analyzing changes nothing; it explains. If you had a virus we could analyze it and explain why you have it, but much better to treat it and the cause. “I know you’re hungry but I cannot give you any food,” is the same as I know you need love but I cannot give you any. Offering food (love) to a starving patient is better than not doing it; and there we have the "raison d’etre" for analysis; I know. I did it for 17 years and was trained at the Freudian center of the west. We give love but we don’t call it that. But we listen endlessly to your travails, are concerned, helpful, encouraging, and concentrate only on you. That is why all of the studies on therapy insist on the warmth and kindliness of the therapist—because that is what they are selling. I’ve got a hard sell; I am selling pain. But at the end of that pain lies liberation.


(From Bruce Wilson, science writer: Ferenczi and Freud would eventually break over their different therapeutic stances but not before Ferenczi noted in his clinical diary that Freud shared with him the harsh sentiment “that neurotics are a rabble, good only to support us financially and to allow us to learn from their cases: psychoanalysis as a therapy may be worthless.”)


I want therapy to be honest. Let’s tell the patient what we are selling. It is fair to her to know what she is buying and not to think she is buying cure while she is buying a daddy. (For those of you who are interested look on our website and see Grand Delusion. There lies many pages on Freud.) Some, like Woody Allen are buying something a bit more sophisticated. Someone to talk to, a daddy who will respond and not be indifferent to his gems. There are all kinds of reasons to stay in Analysis but the bottom line is the need we are acting out there. And believe me going to cognitive/insight therapy is an act out. Going through the motions of getting well without the pain, which is an oxymoron.



Let me tell you about one experience I had not long ago. I was watching French television, which I do mostly, and on Saturday night they have a concert. One singer was wonderful, mesmurizing and they showed a lady in the audience transfixed and full of emotion, just feeling. I turned off the television and felt, “My God, that’s the reaction I have waiting for all my life. To have my parents just once listen to me and be interested.” I then had a primal where I begged them to listen and felt the pain of their not being able to. Much better than rushing to an analyst, waiting a week for him to see me, to have the need/feeling analyzed to death. We give patients the tools to go on feeling and getting better on their own. I also teach all of my patients my techniques and why I employ them. No secrets, no special lingo and above all, nothing to learn about my theory. They don’t have to speak my language—transference—I speak theirs. And that language is feeling.


Of course her therapy felt like a good conversation with a friend. It was. You bought a friend, what else did you want? She could not leave her shrinks because she could not leave her needs. They were never dealt with, so they remained pristine pure until old age. You are a client because you are buying a service. You are a patient when science and medicine enters the picture and you are being treated and cured; that is, addressing the originating causes of the problem.


Daphne is an addict, getting her fix of love every week for years. Much better for all kinds of addicts to feel their pain so that they no longer need a fix, a fix to kill or soften the hurt. My wife was in psychoanalysis in New York. Every time she cried the hour was up and she had to go. It is inhuman. In primal therapy there is no time limit. You leave when you feel like it. That is human. Feelings dictate the length of the session and the content of the session. Make sense?