The Battle with Self

Psychoanalytic Training: A Beginning

A Love Affair, it was -- with all the fire and much of the smoke that goes into relationships. There is a certain built-in excitement in the promise of psychoanalytic training ... to have one's fingers on the pulse of all that is human.   And, the Candidates in my cohort, indeed, were either pissed-off or mesmerized by our early classes. Some left training pretty quickly. Two were quite disturbed by Harold but stayed nonetheless.  

Classical Freudian Analysis had changed by the early 1970's but, still, a sexual theory of neurotic disturbance was -- if not sufficient to understand all -- a necessary component to most any new theorist's views of what the Ego Psychologists were thinking of as a General Psychology. As early as 1912, Jung had suggested a theory that was not locked into what Freud suggested to him was a bulwark to the external forces that were seeking to discredit the young Science ... or was it an Art. Jung, in spite of the valiant efforts by Emma Jung to patch things up between the two still-young warriors -- left and formed his own group. The generations working at mid-Century, however, were adding a great deal. Even Anna Freud -- and a bit before Papa's death -- had introduced additions (may I call them) to Sigmund's theories but most typically without subtracting from them. By the time I began training, there was a considerable increase in those who no longer believed that neurotic behavior could all be explained by conflicts surrounding what the founders saw as the two principle human drives ... Sex and Aggression ... Eros and Thanatos or Destrudo. Perhaps, the most compelling change involved the recognition that there was a drive towards connection.

One might extract such a theory of connection from Freud and, indeed, Freud had mentioned en 
passant that there was a possibility that the attachment drive was still more basic -- earlier in development -- than the sexual one that brings folk close in order to procreate ... to preserve the species. But others were beginning to see the wish to connect as built-in on almost a cellular level. Those who were born without a profound drive to stay-near to Mama -- we may presume -- wandered off from home and were eaten by Tigers and Bears -- thus, being drummed out of the genetic pool. We who remain feel a degree of security much of the time in being close to a warm and maternal other and a beneficent protector ... a traditional paternal figure. Freud had been the first, perhaps, to tie the working out of these two connections to emotional health and to a sense of right and wrong.

Perhaps, Freud's most powerful contribution was the manner in which he tied the development of health inside a well personality with the battle to deal with a kind of narcissistic need not to allow Mom and Dad to relate except through the child, hm- or herself. The child sees the parents copulating  and fights against this awareness. The little boy wants to lay with Mama and kill Papa. Freud called this the Primal Scene and saw the complex that grew up around these troubles the (positive) Oedipus complex. It would be somewhat more than 5 years in my future but I, like Jung, would come to question the sexual center of this complex. Unlike Jung, I would suggest a model that had to do with any single child's narcissistic wound in the recognition that others have relationships that exist independent of him or her ... a wound that has less to do with the sexual nature of the parents' relationship that with the very fact that they had complex lives that existed independently of the child.

Such perfidies begin easily enough; they die hard, if ever! 

Through the Looking Glass

The third course was a different matter, entirely. We all sat down and Harold asked what we wanted to be called and a bit about what we were willing to share about ourselves on this first day. Anne, Carol, Howard, Patrick, etc. ... each in their turn dutifully responded with their first name and a brief on where they'd been for their earlier professional career. Harold handed out a -- perhaps -- 100,000 page reading list of literature with which we should become familiar over the next several years. It was 8 pages with one entry devoted to Freud's >6,000 pages of psychological writings -- fortuitously, translated into English. Harold then quietly explained that he would like to be called by his title and last name. 

Need I say, this group of post-professional were considerably less than pleased. 

Students: "You tricked us."

"Why should you be the only one addressed by his title?"

Harold: "I don't think it could be that I'm the only one wearing a tie. preferences are, what to say, preferences. ... But let's begin."

Perhaps, I consider that interchange and the bitterness that came out of it the beginning of my psychoanalytic training. Harold went on to talk about the requirements. Classes would begin on time and end on time and he and we were expected to attend all classes. He would recommend readings for each week and we would read to the best of our ability. And, then ...

"For each class, you will bring in a 5"x8" index card with your name, the date of the class and any comments you'd like to write on the card. You'll hand that in to me. If there are any missing or late cards, you will not receive a passing grade for the course."

The candidates, already upset by "the Name-Game," were getting more and more pissed. I remember thinking that both my face and the faces of my comrades (poised to bear arms against 6'2''/60'ish Harold) didn't seem to hide just how dissatisfied they were. And Harold began talking about how the theories of psychoanalysis were like the wrappings on a package ... The core of psychoanalysis, on the other hand, was the process of free association of feelings ... usually expressed on a fainting couch. Feelings led to other feelings and often-times got us in trouble and we all develop ways of hiding that trouble. Free Association allows us to get a random sample of those feelings and to understand how they follow each other ... how they are canonically sequenced. Some of us, he explained, fade into the woodwork ... become objectified like pieces of random furniture. Others get involved in complex costumery. Harold went on like this -- without notes or anything else in front of him -- for the remainder of our 2.5 hour seminar and the 9 others that followed, that semester. Students in that first class were too pissed to talk after that first bit of nominal chicanery. When time was up, Harold arose to his full height and, without breaking stride, walked through the door noting: "Please, begin reading Freud." Anne piped up: "But where shall we begin?"

Harold: "Volume 24 is an index. You can skip it if you are a'mind to."

and Harold was gone, leaving me, for one, with the problem of the Index Card, the challenge of reading some 100,000 pages, and an apparently love/hate attitude to Harold. Anne and Carol shared with each other their sense of how contemptuous and contemptible a man this was. Others left in a daze.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence! That instant was I turned into a hart, And my desires like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me.                                                                                                                                       —  Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I.1

         Shakespeare presents Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, describing his love for the rich countess, Olivia, with a variety of metaphors and in a variety of voices; there is little doubt that the phenomenology of love includes these and more. For Shakespeare’s Orsino, vision plays a part in love (“O, when mine eyes ...”), as does some promise that the other, the lover, will serve the role of a powerful and beneficent protector (“Methought she purged the air of pestilence!”). Shakespeare goes on to allude to a transformation wherein the once-active one or the subject, the Duke, becomes the object — here — of his own desires. We may note, as well, a shift in metaphor from loving eyes and protectiveness to the scene of the hunt in which the Duke, now portrayed as a pursued stag (“That instant was I turned into a hart”), is pursued by his own internal demons (“And my desires like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me”). (from Preface: Oedipal Paradigms in Collision ... 1998)

My first day in school? We began three courses. The first two were rather straightforward. One was a course on child development ... on the unfolding psychological and physical and social development of the child as seen through the lens of those who had trained in the Child Analysis of Anna Freud and those wh -- even if they differed -- deferred to the type of thinking that Freud's daughter had chosen. The course was taught by an analytically trained Child Psychiatrist who was quite organized but not particularly charismatic ... little flair ... no flares. Readings were broad and covered the first generation of Freud and his students and, thereafter, those latter day saints who stayed within the boundaries that were established by the editorial board of the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child which was pretty much still being guided by the Younger Freud. Child Analysis was, itself, not considered "real analysis," as it required certain modifications. What to say? What we were taught did not include those who may have strayed or who had stridently disagreed with Anna. I found this curious.

The second was a series of seminars on various types of psychopathologies. How did analysts see health and pathology. This was taught by a very charismatic Psychologist trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic and who had been involved in the Resistance during WW2. He spoke with a heavy accent which made him a good stand-in for Sigmund -- already dead for more than thirty years. He openly admitted to taking supervision in his early years from some of the "others," but when it came to disagreeing with him or even openly questioning how a conclusion was derived from the data, he would respond with:

"Don't marry before your Fahzer." 

The Third Course deserves an entry all its own.

Any case, these first two Seminars on this weekend morning weren't accompanied by visceral reactions as when the Duke Of Illyria first laid eyes on Olivia or I on M.

      

The Beginning of Wisdom

"The Beginning of Wisdom," the Psalmist (Ps. 111) said, 

"is Fear of God" (ראשית חכמה ... יראת ה׳.) 

The Writer of Proverbs (Pr. 4), 

the son of Psalmy King David, was, perhaps, a tad more cheeky: 

"Wanna get on with Wisdom? Purchase it! And in all your purchases, get deep understanding" ... (ראשית חכמה ... קנא חכמה ... ובכל קנינך קנא בינה)

In any case, the Beginning of Wisdom is rarely found in Falling in Love. One knows -- at the beginning of a Romance -- very little and, like with anxiety, Love comes with a strong connection to the Old Brain and a disconnection from the Analytic Brain of Reason. With Anxiety, reason is out the door ... even near vision is gone. After all, what need is there for looking for cavities in the Tiger's mouth when it is about to close on your head. One Runs for the Hills or Kicks the Ever-Lovin' Crap out of that unforgivin' Cat. 

Love is different and, yet, similar. The Anxiety-Producing-Other has something that sets off terror; the Love-Producing-Other has something the would-be Lover beneficently envies. I see in my Beloved a trait that is beyond me ... that I imagine, at least, that I may share with her. In heterosexual love, I suppose, this is easier to see, but it is no less true in homoerotic love. Indeed, these -- Love and Anxiety -- represent two center-poles of being ... the need to stay far away from that which hurts us and the equally impelling wish to be close to that which protects and lets us taste vicariously what is otherwise beyond us. More about this, later.

When we come to our Loved Other, Rationality is replaced by the Pleasure of the Protective Gaze and Embrace. When I came to Psychoanalysis, there was much that was implicitly promised. When each of us arrives at our Love, our Calling, the sense that (s)he/it provides all is compelling. The Social Psychologists refer to one of the resulting behavior as Group Think ... the sense of a We that Knows and Others who Don't. This, too, cuts into our Anxieties in the simplicity of its Answers. The Pyrrhonian Skeptics of Ancient Greece would argue that this relaxation of anxiety is a false comfort ... that true comfort (ataraxia) arrives when one gives up the need to know. But that's another story, too.

All this is to say that there must be some truth in the aphorism: Love makes us Stupid ... or, at least, blind to the faults of the Beloved. This is not limited, in my way of thinking, to only Romantic Love or to the Psychoanalysis that I came to see as the font of all that was Good. I remember, for instance, my Dentist, Dr. Bob, a bright man, looking me squarely in the eyes and saying:

"Flossing is the most important thing you'll ever do."

And I can recall some 32 years ago, my son's College Counselor telling me in all seriousness that my kid was about to make the most important decision of his life -- which college he would attend. Truth be told, I'm not particularly adept in keeping the Cheekiness I've ascribed to the Writer of Proverbs hidden on my face and I'm confident that Dentist and Counselor both recognized my sense that their comments were arguably absurd.  In any case, I arrived at Psychoanalysis expecting it to hold the answers to every question that the Sphinx may have posed or might yet pose to Oedipus, and more.

The Readers' Right to Know

I feel the need to talk of my experiences in the world of psychoanalysis ... Life among the Analysts, so to speak. I'm looking for a place to air personal reflections, as well as commentary on psychoanalytic theory. 

Beginning Personal Reflections

Life exists only in the presence of Change while a notion of Identity permits us to recognize Similarities in Differences. 

The Living change and – to the extent that the Inert and the Dead share the characteristic of changing very slowly – when Change Ceases or Greatly Diminishes, we say that the Living have Died.

When we Bury the Dead, we speak of those to whom we say Good Bye as having “gone to their Eternal Rest.”

Freddie Mercury wrote and sang: “Love, too, must Die.”  I would suggest that Love must Change or it, too, has joined the Inert in the Death of those Beings and our Reflections-in-Language of those Beings.

I fell in love with Psychoanalysis much the way Young Lovers fall in love with each other. I read everything I could find that Freud wrote after he left the Neurology that occupied the first thirtyish years of his life. This included his Letters and his Clinical and Theoretical Writings. By the time I came to reading the Old Sorcerer, der Alte Hexenmeister fum Wien, these Writings had found a Standardized Version – at least in the English Language. My Mentor in Psychoanalysis from whom I garnered a great deal had instructed us at the end of our first training class to “begin reading Freud.” One of my fellow students, Anne Gilpin, asked Harold Feldman where we should begin. Without breaking stride in his movement toward and through the door, Harold  quietly noted that “Volume 24 was an index and you might skip that, if you choose.”

Harold was referring to the Canonized and Official version translated from Dr. Freud’s melodic/prosaic German into English under the final editorship of James Strachey. He was guiding us to “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud” published by the London Hogarth Press in volumes over a period of many years (1953-1974).

As I just now said: I fell in love with Psychoanalysis much the way Young Lovers fall in love with each other. Psychoanalysis became my continuous companion and I saw most everything through her eyes. I read all about her and largely ignored those who criticized her. I spent much of my money on her just as I had when I was courting M who now has shared the Changing Times with me for 50 years. Let me pause, here, and not shirk what I consider my responsibility to fulfill the Reader’s Right to Know (Covitz, 1997) a bit about the history of the writer who seeks their attention.

By the time I had begun training in Psychoanalysis, M and I had been married for 10 years, had two boys 8 and 9, and were expecting our third child. As we were Jewish, we had decided to attach our sons to the religion of their forbears with ritual surgery and, as our third child, a girl, required no such correctives, we called her the Perfect One, though we gave her a different public name. As she was the only one to follow me into the life of an hourly wage earner in the practice of psychotherapy, I might or might not continue to refer to her as the Perfect One – depending, that is, on my feelings on any given day towards my Calling and Profession in life.

My life before M was largely devoted to studying the Scriptural and Talmudic writings of my maternal ancestors, alongside Theoretical Mathematics. Mom arose from a Rabbinical family and my Dad, while Jewish, grew up in an immigrant family that was closer to Socialist and Labor concerns; I grew up, that is, in a Mixed Marriage. Talmudic thinking came from my Maternal Grandfather and plumbing, carpentry and auto mechanics came from my Dad/ Along these same lines, I found M exotic; she had been raised in a far-less ritualistic family. In my family, it was most typical – and I certainly followed this pattern – to attend schools that were modified transplants of the Yeshivas (Seminaries) of Central Europe.  I was one of those youngsters who had spent many years leaning over volumes written in Hebrew and Aramaic …  Yiddish was, in many ways, the preferred language in both of my parents’ families of origin and some curvature of the spine leading to late-life stenosis was no surprise when it arrived.

As I said, M was – for me – an exotic from the time I met her on the last day of February in 1965. Even her skin was darker (tanned) than my own pale derm. But back to the comparison with Psychoanalysis. All energies were directed to her and everything – all sensory data and all that was of value –  was interpreted through her eyes and through her reactions.  Had we courted in the age of Text Messaging, I suspect our Wireless bills would have been outrageous. As I observed a prohibition to ride on our Day of Rest, I would walk the 8 miles from where I lived to where she lived on most Sabbaths and by the 1960’s Summers of Love, we were busy changing the diapers of the fruit of our love and loins.  

I hope the picture is clear … Religious Writings, Mathematics, M and Psychoanalysis. Had I turned to Jung (we did try the Jungian Group in Zurich in the early 1970’s, but I couldn’t parse Jung’s thoughts), I would have called myself “the Juggler.”

Well ... I hope the picture is clarifying, anyway. Your author has an addictive personality … he gets hooked. Those early years before I began training in Psychoanalysis, I continued my Love of Mathematics and maintained a system of Metaphors from Scriptural sources rather than those that might have arisen from Pop Culture. I was a polyamor! By the time I began training in Psychoanalysis, I had written a last paper in Mathematics and was running a school for disturbed inner city adolescents, still reading religious sources, being pretty cozy with the World of Plumbing and Carpentry and Car Repair and was Dad and Husband.

Not so long ago, one of my in-law-kid’s Dad asked me to explain my life. Fifty Years of Marriage and Eighteen-Years-to-Life in Parenting, Forty years of teaching University Mathematics and Statistics, Twenty years of teaching Psychoanalysis and University Psychology, a Dozen years Directing a Psychoanalytic Training facility, a short time running a school for Disturbed Inner City Adolescents and quite a bit of time laying under our cars with the likes of a Torque Wrench or other Weapons of Repair in my hand. Last year, poor M tried to convince this Old Man to hire someone (like a Plumber?) to change a broken toilet in my office’s Waiting Room. … Good Luck, M!

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In any case, that’s a brief introduction to the stubborn guy who once fell in love with Psychoanalysis.

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