Psychoanalysis FAQ

The greatest benefit of psychoanalysis is that it's often the only place in the world where
people have an emotional home. Often the most intimate relationship (though of course not
the only) that people have is with their analyst.
This is dismaying for people to hear. They want their husbands and wives to be their most
intimate relationship, or their girlfriends, or their mother or father. If this is possible, that's
great. I just haven't met many people who will say everything to any of those people in their
lives--or they try to but their spouse isn't that interested or helpful--or they can say
everything but their husband or wife doesn't say anything back.

But we do say everything to our analysts. And they say interesting things back.

In fact, in every other type of relationship, it is often inappropriate or even destructive to say
everything while it is the exact opposite in analysis--saying everything, positive and negative,
is the rule, and it feels good, like a refuge, and the more you say the better your life becomes.

Do you want to know which couples do relate intimately to each other, without obstacles to
saying everything?
Couples who are both in analysis or in an analytic group. Over time they learn the language
of emotional communication, the language they've come to learn by talking to an analyst.
Their prognosis is excellent in terms of actually being able to put their concerns and wishes,
opinions and thoughts and feelings, into constructive, progressive words. These discussions,
that are the result of both people being willing to spend some amount of time in analysis,
have a beneficial effect on their intensity of love for each other, their lack of interest in
concealing and hiding their darkest feelings, on their ability to manage a home harmoniously,
and on their sex life.

Typically, you can't say everything to your partner--he or she is either not interested in
everything that's on your mind, or is literally turned off and driven away by your deep, dark
thoughts and feelings, or genuinely wants to help but simply doesn't have the words.
People who attempt to use their partners as therapists become terribly disappointed over
time.

You can say everything to your friends (usually, though most people don't) but then they get
a turn saying everything to you. It's great but friendship isn't a place of your own like therapy
is, just for you, unreciprocal, unlike a friendship, where you are called on to respond to the
other person's needs.

Reading about psychoanalysis as a replacement for going through the process is a great
fantasy but I haven't met anyone yet who achieved the benefit of a real analysis from reading
about, rather than going through (though their vocabulary increases).

Family as therapist? Please.

Psychoanalysis is all for you.

Besides providing perhaps the ideal emotional home, psychoanalysis teaches a language
called "progressive emotional communication", to explain your obstacles to being the kind of
person you've always wanted to be; it gives you the tools to have more harmonious
relationships; or help to decide to leave relationships that will never be harmonious. It helps
you figure out what is keeping you from doing what you logically know would get you to your
goals but you haven't been able to do the logical.

It explains why rationality and emotionality aren't getting you anywhere; the difference
between your perception of yourself and other people's perceptions of you; and much more.

~~
What does psychotherapy feel like? It should feel like your emotional home, the place you can't find in other
relationships, which are good for other things, and are often unnecessarily burdened when people try to use
those relationships as a substitute for psychoanalysis.

Therapy is supposed to be fun. Even when you're enraged at the analyst, he is trained to discuss this in a
way that's illuminating, stimulating, not persistently contentious and a drag.

If it's not like that, if showing up at your sessions is driving you crazy, or (more common), boring you for more
than a month, or it used to feel productive but not anymore--find another analyst or start to consider that
psychoanalysis is not for you. It isn't for everyone.

For example, I knew someone who only went to a therapist when he wanted to get out of a relationship. He
wasn't interested in learning what kept him from holding onto a relationship. So his brief amount of time
coming to sessions with me was not gratifying to him.
So he would go to a therapist when it was too late to save a relationship that could have been fine. And then
he would leave therapy, get into another relationship, madly in love, and without having stayed in therapy,
that relationship, too, would crash and burn. Psychoanalysis is for people who want to understand their
obstacles to keeping a relationship satisfying and harmonious, and this person imagined that each next
time he could figure that out by himself. And each time his next relationship would fail.

We know that many people feel they'll do better in therapies or other activities that involve more than
feelings, wishes and words. Some people (diagnosis hysteria) cannot tolerate a talking therapy. They have
to be doing things with their body. Sometimes they'll have analysis--but at the same time they're going to this
doctor and that, and falling down, getting bad injuries in order to go to the hospital and have someone touch
their body, doing strenuous exercises (physical therapy)--again, a therapy in which their body gets touched.
And yoga. And the latest health fad--anything involving the body. This includes alcoholism and
overeating.
So psychoanalysis will have no impact on them even though many hysterics give it a try, sometimes for long
periods of time, convincing the analyst that they're getting something from it.

There are many other people who only want crisis intervention, being calmed down and waiting until the next
crisis to return instead of working on keeping crises away. There are others who want social workers who
are always on call and are willing to fill out paperwork and make calls for them to get them out of trouble.
There are others who only want prescriptions, pills and capsules. Talk therapy isn't for everybody and a
good therapist can help these people understand what they want and refer them to a different kind of mental
health professional.

The Lie of Short-Term Therapy

"Psychoanalysis takes too long."

That was the complaint that led to the development of short-term therapies like cognitive-behavioral (CBT),
family systems therapy, and short-term intensive psychodynamic therapy, etc.
Here's the problem. Psychotherapists often have people report that they've had cognitive-behavioral
therapy... four times... over fifteen years. Which means a lot of people are wasting just as much time in failed
short-term therapies as they are in long-term psychoanalysis.

A fallacy of short-term therapy is the actual length, which is actually not short.

I know more short-term therapists than psychoanalysts. Hardly any of their patients/clients are
"finished" "quickly", as advertised. Or they think they're finished and then they're back looking for another
ineffective therapist, to add another few years after disrupting an ineffective therapy.

So psychoanalysis is long, but short-term therapists lie about the length of time it takes to complete
therapy. Most patients of short-term therapies like CBT eventually end up having to take care of the
therapist, who told you it would be quick and then won't let you go.

Additionally, short-term therapy is a lie that you have to work hard at, sitting up, doing homework,
and pretending to the therapist, to protect her feelings, that she didn't lie to you at the beginning
about the short length of time for results.

Psychoanalysis is relaxing--no homework, you lie down on a cozy couch and no one pretends
you'll get any results quickly. If you've spent thirty years learning nothing about feelings, symptoms,
relationships, nothing about being a good parent, how to have a progressive discussion, how to tolerate
other people's anger at you and your's towards them, how can it take a year to re-learn more effective ways
of coping and creating the life you want to have?

A nice analyst is accepting of people quitting to go and look for another emotional home, which many people
attempt to do with their partners, their friends, their families, or with themselves. If this works it's great but
most people are disappointed to find that partners, friends, families, or living in their head, alone, usually
doesn't provide an emotional home.
All of those relationships are good for other things, which an analyst can help you figure out in discussions
about role definition and the frustration of confusing a husband with, for example, the mother you never had.

(From Dr. Spotnitz)

You aren't finished therapy (what is "cure"?):

--if you don't love being with your partner

--if you don't enjoy your work.

--if your children aren't doing well

(if you have children).

--if 1. something besides genuine, not defensive, propriety keeps you from saying whatever is on

your mind

to people outside of analysis, and

2. if you can't say everything to your analyst--no self-censoring.

What is

acting out

(This term applies to the analytic/therapy relationship, which involves words, not actions.)

1. Any indirect communication

(usually the concealed feeling is anger or fear.)

2. Used to communicate some message to the therapist

indirectly, often not at sessions but in between sessions

indirectly at sessions, in behaviors, not words,

destructive behavior disguised as language

3. Any alteration to the agreed-upon structure without discussion

Examples of indirect communication (acting out):

-cancelling appointments or repetitive rescheduling

-getting sick or injured to avoid talking

-standing up during the session, getting out of the chair or up from the couch

-taking therapy "breaks" without discussion

-punishing the analyst for taking vacations by disappearing afterwards

-completely unconscious activity outside the sessions specifically designed to target the analyst

(such as the analyst whose patient,

a politician in the analyst's state legislature, innocently initiated legislation against therapist

insurance reimbursements)

-talking about the therapy with other people behind the therapist's back. (This isn't necessarily acting

out if the patient is discussing the outside activities in therapy, only when it's secret.)

-divulging more feelings and thoughts in letters and phone messages than at sessions

-leaving a session before the end

-silence

ssaultive

language disguised as 'assertiveness'

Psychiatry isn't any

ype

of psychotherapy.

When will the public, even the extremely-educated public (like Louis

Menand in

recent article in the New Yorker) stop confusing psychiatry with

psychotherapy?

Psychiatrists do two things--diagnose and prescribe medication funnelled

from the pharmaceutical companies that fund their conferences.

Unless they have

had advanced training in psychotherapy,

in addition to and away from medical school,

they aren't

qualified to practice psychotherapy.

Legally

they are allowed to but, as a patient in money trouble said to me recently (when I

suggested that Ontario would pay for her therapy 100%

if she went to an M.D.

so why was she

coming to me), "Jean. You

know psychiatrists stink".

Antidepressants are the most prescribed medication in the U.S. today.

People frequently try the psychiatry route, which will include medication and

turns disturbed people

into

disturbed drug addicts.

The scene in "Running With

Scissors", in which

disturbed mother becomes a disturbed drug

addict

, opens her hands for the

who pours Valium into them for the first

time, is a great

example of this. The camera is in slow

motion

as she becomes a drug addict as well

as mentally ill.

Psychiatry is useless therapeutically

and with

altered brain chemistry and toxed-up

bloodstreams

Psychiatry involves crossing the physical boundary, which is why malpractice insurance is about

million

dollars more for M.D.'s than for therapists who don't step over the line between the psyche

and the body.

So how do you choose which path to take? This is my advice.

Everyone has problems but people in therapy are better off than people who aren't in therapy.

Whatever therapy you're doing should be fun. "Fun" is defined differently by all of us. For some it

means

stimulating, thought-provoking. For others it means soothing.

Others like being confronted, challenged.

Most of us find that we want all of those things on different days so it's good to have an analyst

who

attuned and can flow with your needs on any particular day.

If your therapy isn't fun, find someone or something else. If you have a therapist, using any

approach,

who

tells you to stay when he or she isn't making it fun at all, GET OUT FAST!

You might have a therapist who won't kick you out when he realizes that you aren't having fun or

progressing

but you want to stay anyway. That's kind of him. Your therapist shouldn't kick you out if

you aren't acting out,

and you still have hope that the two of you working together will lead to

something better for you outside of

analysis.

The fact that the best company you have is with your therapist isn't connected to your lack of

progress.

Lack of progress has more to do with you, an adult, deciding to continue to deflect blame

for your

lack of progress onto everyone else (my mother did blah blah to me etc.), and you deciding

not to

act

responsibly and loving. This will have nothing to do with the therapy you chose to be

in. Modern analysis will

give you the tools you need to become more therapeutic to your partner and

children and other loved

ones.

The more dedicated you are to your relationship with your analyst, the better able you will be to create

intimate environment at home and with anyone else you want.

In my experience

the only

psychotherapy that

literally slows down a

person's path to self-

knowledge,

healing and responsible action is one that includes medication

(legal or

illegal)

Feelings cure, and

ubstances

stop feelings.

short amount of time on any medication

on't

have a damaging effect

on the body

and

some

people do need to be prescribed an antidepressant or antianxiety

temporarily.

The

length

of time the patient relies on the medication

and the doctor relies on the

medication

is the determining factor in psychotherapy outcome.

ll substances

cross the physical

line, disrupting the psyche

bizarre ways

and

putting a halt

any

psychic (mental, spiritual,

emotional) progress.

Prosthetic

contentment

(synthetic and natural mind-altering substances)

s great

in theory

(and

theories are

wishes

)

but it

doesn't work

After it fails,

depending on the length of medicine treatment,

you

'll

have to

recover the years you

lost to it, plus find a good

non-medical

therapist

, or a psychiatrist who has more faith in feelings and

talking than in prescribing medicine,

the same time. Many

eople are so burned out

iochemically

, not

emotionally,

by their

experience

with

tranquilizers and chemically produced

serotonin

reuptake that they never

find the

motivation to

get

back on track.

After all of this negativity and confusion the question is: why should people be in therapy with one

good-

enough therapist over a long period of time?

The answer is simple, it is beginning to be backed by neuro-science, and it's true:

Everyone has problems but people in talk therapy are better off than people who aren't.

What is

Destructive Narcissism?

1. not knowing the impact you have on others,

2. not knowing how other people perceive you

3. knowing

but not caring

(Only number 3 has a healthy [as in self-protectiveness] as well as a destructive

component. To

survive and to live well we often do what we know unsettles others. Even with a

conscience, many

acts

of self-protectiveness contain an essential uncaring attitude, or "healthy selfishness".)

The misconception about narcissism is that it has to do with self-love. "Love" isn't an

accurate word

to describe narcissism. In fact, people who hate themselves persistently are more

narcissistic than

the stereotype (fitness junkie, mirror lover) narcissist, because the self-hating

narcissist isn't only

unconscious or uncaring about the impact his self-hating behavior has on the people

he knows. He

wants people to think he's a nice person at the same time he's annoying them.

Example 1. One of the hundreds of images of narcissism identified by psychoanalysts

is the mother

who (thinks she) puts herself last. This could be indicated by her persistent neglect of

her well-being,

communicated to her children overtly or covertly (verbally or behaviorally). She doesn't

realize or

doesn't care that the worst kind of mother a child can have is a mother who hates

herself (the

alcoholic, the weeper, the depressive, the self-sacrificing sufferer etc.)

Example 2. Another expression of narcissism is the person who's always late or

doesn't show up for

meetings, dates, appointments. He has no awareness that his absence has a hurtful

effect on the

people he's cancelling. Some of the nicest people in the world are this type of

unconscious

narcissist.

They think they can avoid the law by getting away with their so-called talents, like a

baby who gives a

big smile and all is well.

Example 3. Parents who can't say 'no' to their children are narcissistic (or express

'narcissistic

vulnerability' in that area). Instead of helping their children learn responsibility,

consequence,

structure and maturity, narcissistic parents abandon their parental job in order

(unconsciously) to

avoid being hated by their children. Consciously they think they're being nice, cool.

What they're

really

being is easy on themselves: narcissistic, at the sake of people who need them to be

considerate

and knowledgeable about the developmental tasks of children at all ages

So we see that

narcissism has to do with impact, not love.

Being 'nice' and feeling love

don't prevent

a person from being a narcissist. There's no connection between love and being a

good person.

Diagnosis

In determining prognosis some contemporary analysts rely less on psychiatric

diagnoses, although

they are familiar with psychiatric lingo.

In general, a

person has a good prognosis if he or she

s capable of

conform

ing

to the

minimal

structure

of the analytic contract

no matter how she's feeling that day

1. Show up.

2. Lie on the couch (or for phone sessions, recline in a quiet area at home or office).

3. Talk.

This seems to correspond to the psychiatrist's DSM.

For instance, a

borderline

personality disorder is inclined to attack the structure of

therapy. But the

way a person attacks the simple structure of the analytic contract (show up, lie down,

talk) gives the

therapist immediately complex information about the person's life history.

For example there are a lot of people who aren't borderline who are incapable of

following the three

easy instructions.

Hysterics

need to feel things happening in their bodies at all times so the idea of just

talking makes

them nervous.

In terms of prognosis they either lie down, talk and get well, or they quit, and

continue to act out

through their bodies, going to therapists who can tolerate pacing, flailing, playing with

handbags etc.

Instead of wasting a lot of time doing a psychiatric interview at the beginning of

treatment (a la

Greenson et al), many contemporary analysts instead

analyze the patient's ability to

show up and

talk.

It doesn't matter why she is who she is until you both find out if she can tolerate

showing up and

talking.

The prognosis is excellent for people who show up and talk, even when they "don't

feel like it", that is,

for people who can put their feelings into words, not actions.

The Benefit of Being Willing to Complain & Stay

People will do anything but

speak honestly

stay in the relationship through discussion

, not

acting

out.

Many people do

one of the three

, repetitively avoiding the three-part process that leads to

satisfying

relationships.

For example,

K speaks honestly,

but on his way out the door

S never says when she's furious but stays in a bad relationship forever, crying alone.

G promises to bring all his complaints to N for the two of them to work through together, but

behind N's back

goes to W, X, Y and Z to complain about N.

There are many who do two of the three, i.e., a couple will speak honestly and stay in the

relationship but their discussions are typically not progressive: they don't lead to any kind of plan for

the future that is carried through. There's never any resolution. Even when people do come up with a

plan it will fall through, unless they understand what psychoanalysis teaches, that the unconscious

will fight well-meaning conscious efforts to change. Unless the unconscious is respected and

understood, all good conscious plans for making relationships more harmonious will be as resisted

unconsciously as they are desired consciously.

With a good therapist and an analyzable patient, complaining

and staying

rather than

complaining

and leaving (or just disappearing) is evidence of a good prognosis. For people who

never complain

directly, complaining to the therapist about the therapist is often the first sign of real

progress.

You have people who come in and describe their parents' passivity, depression, listlessness,

vowing not to repeat it.

They seem to jump into therapy enthusiastically. Two weeks later they can't think of

anything to

say.

What they're thinking and not saying is a complaint

: 'you haven't helped me, in three

weeks, feel

better."

So they don't talk, they act.

Three weeks later they cancel an appointment. They have a business meeting in Pittsburgh.

Two weeks later they don't show up, and if you're a beginner you chase them back into a

session.

Within three months they are passive, listless and depressed. This is transference, of course,

the

patient's demonstration of their history. If they continue to demonstrate instead of talk, they will live

their parents' life forever.

If they TALK instead of demonstrate, they will separate and build their own life.

Most of us were raised to shut up or leave. Or feel uncomfortable, never tell the other

person...

then

leave. Or speak up right before leaving, when it's too late to fix. Therapists know that

the

willingness

to speak up and

stay

is an achievement, one that will carry over into your other close

relationships.

For this achievement you will need to have a therapist who can tolerate complaints no

matter

how

irrational he thinks they are. The therapist isn't required to agree with your complaints

but he

does

need to have or develop the capacity to hear everything.

Most of the complaints people have about therapy and therapists are based on the

understandable

wish that psychotherapists be magicians or God, brother, bar buddy... or husbands,

wives,

girlfriends, or fortune tellers... mostly, better parents than the ones they had. For

many (not all)

people

in analytic therapy/analysis, those wishes are what transference and resistance

consist of at

least

part of the time. If these common wishes interfere persistently with accepting the

structure of

therapy

(putting feelings and thoughts into words, not actions) the person should ditch the

therapist

find

God, magic, fortune tellers, buddies, lovers and good parents instead, perhaps return

to the

analyst

at a later time.

If the person in therapy can tolerate his/her feelings of frustration and disappointment

in the

therapist

without acting out (see above for "acting out"), interesting and valuable work will be

done

After,

not

before, the patient stops acting out

the analyst will be able to help him understand

his

desire to

wreck.

In order to have a better life than the one you're having now, you have to figure out,

out loud with

the

therapist, what keeps you from saying everything, including complaints.

Realistic complaints that psychotherapists are accountable for:

The therapist "talked too much", "used up more of the session talking than I did" at

"the session I

paid for".

The therapist "allowed too much silence", "didn't help me talk".

The therapist was "so nice that I was afraid to tell her about my angry side and

disturbing

thoughts".

The therapist "was so brilliant that I was intimidated and couldn't talk".

The therapist "gave me homework to do in between sessions, and when I didn't do it

I felt guilty and

didn't go back".

I learned a lot in the first two years. Then nothing new was happening after that. But

when I

discussed ending at that point, the therapist wouldn't discuss alternatives with me.

Unrealistic complaints that therapists/analysts aren't accountable for but must be

taken

seriously

anyway:

The therapist couldn't fix my problems as fast as I wanted.

The therapist's schedule, choice of partner, decorating style, favorite music bothers

me.

The therapist wouldn't cuddle me, date me, kiss me, marry me.

The therapist couldn't get my wife to have sex with me, be less cold, love me.

The therapist wouldn't let me define the structure of the therapy.

I learned a lot about myself in the first two years but then I reached an impasse that

went on for quite

awhile. When I discussed ending at that point the therapist was agreeable--and I

became furious at

him for agreeing with me.

[Needless to say, the analyst isn't responsible for working with a patient who acts

out.]

What is the difference

between a psychiatrist

psychologist... and a

psychoanalyst?

Psychologists have a university degree in psychology, not psychoanalysis. They are

required to

take

an exam given by their state or province in order to assess their knowledge of

(in

order of

importance

to the psychology profession): statistics, research and experimental design, ethics,

organizational

and industrial psychology,history of psychology, neuroanatomy, and psychotherapy

fraction,

about

5% of the licensure exam questions knowledge of psychotherapy) .

Most but not all psychology programs offer some training in psychotherapy, but not

psychoanalysis.

We recommend that you research the psychologist's

advanced training

(above and

beyond

graduate

school) before entering into therapy with him or her, because a Ph.D. doesn't give

enough

information about the psychologist's knowledge of therapeutic methods.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors, none of whom receive psychoanalytic training in

medical

school.

Psychiatrists are not qualified to do psychoanalytic treatment on the basis of their

degree

and

most

have minimal training in psychotherapeutic methods. Their predominant areas of

expertise are

diagnosis and

drugs

Most of the time they create substance abuse

where there was

none before by

prescribing medication in order to avoid conducting therapy

We recommend psychiatrists to people who sense that they would find medication

therapeutic

than feeling.

Psychoanalysis isn't psychiatry or psychology, although a small minority of

psychologists and

psychiatrists, if they are interested in the unconscious, receive psychoanalytic training

at an

institute

that provides comprehensive psychoanalytic education and clinical training. (Most

psychoanalysts,

before training, come from mental health or other related professions.)

Back to Top

What is

the narcissistic defense

Protecting people from feeling angry or hurt

and getting sick instead. Protecting yourself from feeling angry or hurt by

becoming sick instead. ("Sick" meaning symptomatic, addicted or psychotic.)

The narcissistic defense is unconscious and causes

s to

protect people

e're

afraid

of and

love

from feeling angry or hurt

. People whose lives are controlled by the

narcissistic defense

attack

themselves

instead of confronting

the

people they're angry

with.

Literal confrontation

isn't

required

order to resolve the narcissistic defense.

The triumph of psychoanalysis is that it's a therapy method that happens

between you, your

horrible fantasies and your analyst.

You will never have to go and

tell your father how bad he

was

unless you feel like it. But it isn't a requirement for

resolving your narcissistic defense.

Talking to your

analyst is all that's required.

How do

eople

attack themselves

before the narcissistic defense is resolved

Even when rage and disappointments become conscious, if the narcissistic defense

hasn't been

resolved (if it is understood intellectually only), the person continues to engage in self-

destructive

and defeating behavior (including illness).

An example of the narcissistic defense (sometimes associated with the term

"identification with

the

aggressor") is the woman who became famous for writing a movie about revenge and

the

beauty

older women. The plot of the movie is this: three women whose husbands left them

for younger

women became friends and devised an elaborate plan of revenge to destroy their

husbands.

At the end of the movie the three women celebrate their age, their success, their

resilience, their

friendship and so on.

The

uthor

real

life began to get cosmetic surgery to look younger. Instead of

celebrating she

began to attack her aging body through surgeries designed to make her look like a

young

woman,

her conscious enemy.

Two years ago she went in for more cosmetic surgery and died on the operating table

of heart

failure.

She had identified with the aggressor. Her revenge plan failed because unconsciously

she

yearned

not to be herself but the enemy.

She was still being unconsciously loyal to people who hurt

her. That is the narcissistic defense, protecting people who are damaging to you.

Consciously

she celebrated self-esteem and

raceful

aging.

Unconsciously

she detested herself and

was compelled to treat herself the way her enemy

treated her--the narcissistic defense

Therapy Talk

What do I talk about in therapy sessions?

Anything.

That's too vague. Can you be more specific? What gets talked about in a productive therapy session?

Effective therapy, through which the results last instead of fade away a year after you stop going,

depends on talking, about anything. Long silences work against therapy. That means if you do have

a specific focus for a session it would be discussed, then anything else that you wanted to at your

session. Some people come with a list of topics because it helps them focus when they want to. On

the other hand, if you have no agenda, if you're speechless and stuck for words

it is the therapist's

job to help you talk, and to understand your fear of saying everything that's on your mind

In general, there are five topics which comprise the ideal session. They aren't required, just

something to remember for people who have difficulty thinking of what to talk about:

The Five Therapy Topics:

Present

Past

Dreams

Sex

Transference

What is transference?

When the dynamic was first observed by Freud, transference meant a memory that comes alive in

the therapy setting. The patient transfers incompletely-remembered feelings, wishes and thoughts

from his early relationships onto the analyst, imagining that the analyst is whatever the parents were

that caused perplexing problems in adulthood that aren't easily understood.

For example, if her father was distant, she imagines the analyst is.

The reason the patient can't separate father from analyst is that, until the person has done a great

deal of remembering in therapy, how she feels about her father, in entirety, is repressed (unknown to

her conscious mind). The more we remember the past the less welive it. If you want to own your life

without being a slave to your childhood, remember everything, out loud.

In more recent years the concept of transference has expanded to incorporate the repressed

memories that are stimulated by all relationships, not just the therapy relationship. For example, it is

common for partners to stimulate memories in each other of their early childhood relationships. This

causes no end of trouble for couples when it's unconscious, which is why it's important that each

come to understand when and how the partner is stimulating a memory (they become conscious).

For example, the young man whose ineffectuality stimulates memories in the young woman of her

own mother's enjoyment of her father's ineffectuality. This pleasant memory of her mother beating up

on her father causes her to fall madly in love with the young man whose most salient trait is

procrastination. If all of this happens unconsciously, no one will understand why she starts to harass

him eventually and become unhappy. Before analysis the young woman thought her mother's life

was happy and harmonious, living with a man who caused her disappointment and frustration.

In modern analytic therapy, "transference" is understood to be every thought, feeling, opinion and

wish the person in treatment has towards therapy in general, and the analyst/therapist specifically.

This can range from "I'm hoping that through analysis I'll figure out why I can't stop smoking" to "The

other times I've had therapy it failed and I'm sure this will too" to "It's always too cold in your office", to

"I hate your tone of voice. What you say is smart but your tone is annoying", to "I felt something in here

last time that I've never felt before in my life" to "I'm not coming back, I've had enough" to "You are so

great, no one's ever understood me the way you do".

There are different types of transference: positive, negative, idealizing, mirroring.

Mother, father, both, brother, sister, both. Me-who-I-want-to-be, me who I hate. In all these situations

the patient sees in the analyst what he or she needs to be talking about, that hasn't been talked

about before.

In the face of persistent negative transference that the analyst is incapable of analyzing, what should

the patient do?

Assuming the therapist is someone who can acknowledge responsibility:

1. People who complain and stay in treatment at the same time have the best prognosis for getting

the life they want.

2. People who complain and leave at the same time have a poor prognosis, and

3. People who disappear from therapy without saying anything at all have the worst prognosis for

having a better life.

On Feelings

Be honest for a minute. One way you can tell if you need psychoanalysis (not psychiatry or

psychology) is if you have symptoms instead of feelings, or addictions instead of wishes. Most

symptoms are caused by feelings and wishes that are too painful to acknowledge. When we deny

feelings there is nothing for the mind to do with them but turn them into symptoms. These include

depression and anxiety, both of which are disguises for deeper feelings. If you think that anxiety and

depression are bad, what about homicidal wishes towards your partner? Which would you rather

acknowledge feeling: persistent hatred towards your wife or husband, or "depression"? A great

majority of people find "depression" and "anxiety" a lot less unpleasant to live with than admitting they

feel hate, or envy, or fear... or lonely, vulnerable and lost underneath every day that goes by.

The inability to form and hold onto close relationships is also a result of denying feelings, because a

great relationship is almost entirely dependent on being able to identify and express feelings to your

partner. People who can't tolerate their feelings will need to conceal them or take them to someone

else besides the person the one who stimulated them in the first place. This is a form of promiscuity

that wrecks relationships. Most important, this whole process starts by feelings denied.