Graeme Daniels Psychewriter

Another reunion. Another? Like I’ve been to so many. “This is my second,” I said to—I’ll call him Steve for now. His stats were better. He’d been to every one since the first one at year five. They’re supposed to happen at five-year intervals, so what gives, I thought, when I saw the e-mails three months ago, only a year and a half after the last event. This was a multi-plex, multi-year reunion, I soon learned: a gathering of all classes at Acalanes from the eighties. That may have promised a bigger turnout to come, but it didn’t seem to be the case. The numbers seemed roughly comparable to those of the 21’ reunion of my one and only class, I casually observed. Something homeostatic, maybe? More people from across the years means more people you don’t know; more of a crowd to wade through before seeing a familiar face. That would be my truth regardless, so I’d be no more deterred than I ever was. Some may not have preferred this promissory more. Others would be drawn by the structure, perhaps: an admirably designed tripartite of loose gathering in a park, boozy clique-seeking at a bar, and then a presentation, featuring a panel of alumni giving their high school testimonials.

I saw a familiar face at the first get together, and I mean a face as the body had changed significantly. That was to be expected, of course, given the passage of time—thirty six years, I’m now bound to say. Regarding bodies, I’m not one to talk, I think is the expression. Anyway, Steve had a hanging back, been-here/done this look about him, about which I got the story soon enough.

“Which reunion’s been your favorite?” I asked, talking smallishly.

Steve made an impressed noise. A good question, he evinced. After all, he’d been to every one so far. He wasn’t boasting. “Um, the thirtieth, I think,” he said with some conviction. Then he paused, thought again. “No, check that. The twentieth was the best. I met my wife at the twentieth”.

“Ah-hah”, I uttered, also impressed. Then I paused. “I agree that’s a good reunion. Sound criteria for a great reunion, actually”.

Steve nodded, just about registering my drollness.

“Um, that thirtieth one must’ve been something to rival the one where you…ya know”. I didn’t get more on that subject. No intriguing or salacious story was forthcoming there. Perhaps Steve had looked over his shoulder while talking, having caught sight of his more gregarious other half moving towards us. She appeared moments later, showing some manner of need for him, then a perfunctory interest in me. Also a former classmate, she rang a bell for me, though the feeling did not seem mutual. Before I moved on, I scrolled memories of them, wondering if they’d seemed a match as teens. Had they long harbored secret admiration for each other? Or, were they one of those couples who meet later in life, with one or both scoring a more pleasing re-assessment.

That’s one of the reasons for H.S. reunions, I will have thought. I mean, it’s a cliché, isn’t it? You attend in order to show off what you are today, not just to reminisce on what you were decades ago during the awful stage of life called adolescence. And if you attend a reunion when you’re much older, perhaps more attractive, however that is indexed in later years, and you find someone who is available, jaded by the dating battlefield or been there/failed that at marriage, then a second look at once-upon-a-time “crushes” may be called for. Good for them, I thought. Speaking of crushes, there would be more on that later at the panel discussion, which I learned I might have been a part of but for the decisions of the event organizer. At the same gathering, I’d seen Matt floating about in his ubiquitous way and called out to him. We had a few moments recalling the last time we’d spoken, which had been at a nearby hotel about a year ago. Matt, Mayor Matt of Acalanes alumniville, had been impressed by my recall of an old TV appearance of his pertaining to his career as a journalist. He’d enjoyed my write-up of the last reunion of the 86’ class in 21’, and in particular my light-hearted parody of his good image. Now, in our few minutes together, I came to understand that our follow-up talk in a hotel bar was an interview of sorts, about taking part in the future in the kind of public discussion he’d facilitated at the last reunion. It’s not that I failed that interview: it was more of a keep you on file sort of thing because I didn’t quite make the cut. I was a back-up, Matt now said—on deck should any of the panelists of this event drop out.

And I was cheerfully accepting of this having not expected any contact on the matter for at least another three years. Truth be told, I might have been more equivocal about the suggestion in the first place, and that equivocation was further stoked when I attended the panel-discussion portion of the reunion. It would be too facile to say that I didn’t enjoy the two-hour discussion that took place at the Acalanes Performing Arts Center; equally unfair or imprecise to say that I was envious of the speakers, Matt included, or otherwise thought myself inadequate compared to my peers. Well, in some respects, I thought that. The issue is complex and it depends on everything from taste to some manner of ethics to determine what makes for a good high school testimonial. For sure, Matt had done due diligence—his homework, as we’d have said back in the day—and made not only a fair selection, but to an extent a diverse and star-studded one. At least two of the panelists were celebrities, or near-celebrities—both in a writerish, behind the scenes sort of way. Another was a former mayor of our hometown, and a figure who rubbed shoulders with Matt in political circles on the east coast. Matt himself had rubbed shoulders with a stable of household names in his career, from Presidents to California governors. With his ease on the mic and before an audience, he seemed like he could add talk show host to his resume, if he hasn’t already. He put together a nice movie and music collage, and kept his poise when the AV technicians played the wrong video. He prefaced introductions with fond tributes, and made clever asides, like juxtaposing quotes of German philosophers with those of obscure punk bands. He exuded a kind of Charlie Rose-like charm—or, at least the kind of charm that man had before we learned he wasn’t so charming. 

With each panelist, Matt drew upon past conversations and preparatory questions, sounding like a seasoned therapist at times. He teased out disclosures that panelists might not have wanted to share; perhaps broke tacit agreements over don’t go there details. The fourth member of the panel was a self-identified social underdog, a girl from the other side of the tracks who didn’t fit in with popular kids, and didn’t fare much better with teachers and principals. Karen is the owner of the Round-Up Saloon, a rather creaky if stalwart fixture that is sandwiched between a spread of luxury condos on Lafayette’s main strip. In recent years, Lafayette has not so much grown as bulked up, which has no doubt helped the nightlife business in the heart of town. Karen recalls being terrible at math at Acalanes, but that didn’t stop her diving into the pool of small business, and has apparently thrived in it ever since, with an anachronistic, “cash only” policy no less. Still, the reason she was behind the microphone was to share about high school’s more shadowy memories. She was a “stoner”, I guess, a runaway, and during one spell anyway, a victim of a kidnapping gardener employed by the school (incidentally, in writing this, I’m gambling on an impression that Karen has reconciled herself to the semi-public disclosure of her story, and seems at peace with it. Besides, the readership of this untagged blog entry will be quite modest in its numbers, and likely not of interest to non-alumni. That’s my rationale, at least). While some panelist recollections were comic in purpose, like covering the being-high-in class category of anecdote, for example, or the weight-gaining properties of past cafeteria snacks (funny asides, both), the women’s stories were somewhat haunting. Allusions to bullying, sexist teachers embedded within a sexist eighties pop culture, took center stage with the other female panelist complaining that “boobs” had dominated the decade.  

I’m not quite sure what to say about eighties culture. It’s not my favorite decade in that respect. It seems the zeitgeist to celebrate its music and maybe some of its movies, but not so much its values. I didn’t even like the music that much. My sporty friends liked some of the bands mentioned the other night, like Van Halen or Journey. I have memories of working out in the school gym, listening to those bands, AC/DC, or other such acts whose raison d’etre was fuck chicks, drink beer, do cool things with the guys, etc. I patronized the noise but hadn’t yet developed my taste—ever a later bloomer, it seemed. I am reminded that when Steve mentioned that he’d soon be attending a Deff Leppard concert in Sheffield, England, I nearly faux pauxed with “I’m sorry to hear that”. That thought was partly about Sheffield, England, actually. Anyway, like many dweebs or nerds (or whatever the terms were in that Ferris Beuler inventory), I didn’t notice the values that some of those bands implied, and therefore I didn’t object much to the boob-exposing or beer-centric culture they glamorized. I wasn’t that into the genteeler options either, such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, English Beat, Spandau Ballet and others of that cool and epicene ilk. For a hot minute I liked Queen, long before they were fashionable to like, and for a while because I couldn’t get that insistent beat from “Another One Bites The Dust” out of my head. Later, I noted amongst my peers the cool indifference towards theirs and Freddie Mercury’s beyond America, worldwide fame, and sort of inferred that pre-Aids homophobia was the reason. The Go-Go’s were another guilty pleasure. I liked their bouncy, fun energy, wanted to get in my pajamas and join the slumber party. But, for reasons to do with sex I suppose, I also felt like an uninvited guest whenever I listened to them, like I was a younger brother who had sneaked into my sister’s room to hang out with her friends. Meanwhile, I loathed Iron Maiden, thought them ridiculous, a Spinal Tap prototype, and I’m pretty sure that saying so was the reason I was not invited back to a regular Dungeons & Dragons game circa 1984. It didn’t matter, I sucked at that game anyway. About Maiden, I understand they are getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Kudos for them, I think now that my musical snobbery has softened, but I’d still love it if a three-foot replica of Stonehenge dropped down behind them during their acceptance speech.

On the values question, I have a few thoughts to offer, some of them not so with it with the times that aren’t a changin’ as much as some think. Firstly, on the not noticing front: I realize that it’s not good enough to say that you don’t or didn’t notice things like sexism, or racism. It’s a poor excuse, like when German citizens post WWII said they didn’t know anything about the camps. Same concept anyway—denial, I mean—so chill if you think the analogy distasteful. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t in those PE classes where some football coach told the girls to bend over, and I wasn’t at the parties where beer-soaked stripteases and date rapes were happening. I know. I’m being defensive, and it’s not all about me, I hear you saying. And the ladies, by which I mean all or many of them, not just the two panelists plus the feminine hmming of last Saturday night, aren’t saying that gentlemen drop the ball by not calling out their creepier brethren on bad behavior. But they are, sort of. It’s like that song from one of those quintessentially eighties films that wasn’t just about lewd behavior and cheap laughs: “I need a hero”, from Footloose, which sits alongside Breakfast Club, or Say Anything, as cinematic odes to sensitive yet heroic eighties guys.  See, some ideas still sell: someone’s got to step up and be that cute but decent, sincere, libidinally-restrained guy that will do the right thing for, as ever, women.

I did not particularly like Rebels with causes films featuring James Dean heir apparents, and I liked even less films that were about drinking, peeping in shower holes, hunting gophers on a golf course, or animal housing. I simply was not a party animal, so had my peers not talked about Porky’s whatever year it came out, I might have thought it a Porky Pig cartoon also. Those things about the eighties, or our high school experience of that era, have indeed not aged well. I don’t suppose they were ever meant to. But before I peel off into another pop culture spiel, here’s another point of view: I think there are elephant-in-room-sized holes in the current dialogues about men, women, and sex. The holes are the result of censorious rules of engagement, translated as cultural sensitivity for those who support that sort of thing. For example, Helens of Troy, as in women who like and therefore enable crude, mesomorphic men, still exist. But they’re a media-protected species (the women, not the mesomorphs): it’s acceptable to lament their victimizations at the hands of shallow or cruel men, but—for male observers, at least—it’s not okay to point out that they chose those men originally and it was never shocking that such men would misbehave. Plus, there are those who will speak of being objectified one minute, and yet squeal at Rob Lowe’s image the next, or even join Will Forte in a conjured (and perhaps lustier) memory of Mathew McConaughey’s bare chest. In high school and beyond, these women turned their attention to guys who were over six feet tall and had broad shoulders, or dreamy eyes and six pack abs. So, you think that a deep gaze into nice eyes is nicer, more humane or romantic than a glassy-eyed scan of a chest? Well, maybe you’re right, but maybe not by much. After all, you’re still privileging the physical, or assigning personal qualities based on that dubious linkage. And really, after all this time, what do you expect us nerds and dweebs whom you looked past once upon a time to say about this? If, one day, college coursework will teach something else about objectification—namely, that’s it’s a concept drawn from pre-twentieth century philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, not post-modernism, and means reducing a person to a thing or an idea, then that which makes us mad may actually broaden. 

Anyway, this is why people don’t invite me to parties. Or, it’s a reason I don’t go. It’s a chicken or egg thing, really. Conscious fear tells me that my voice or my opinions are not worthy of a hearing. Freud’s descendants tell me that I shut myself down lest something dangerous and wrong gets out. If I attend the bashes and do what I want to do—have quiet conversations about these sorts of things at close quarters—I’ll either behave as a pedantic, boorish guest, or else I’ll inhibit myself and become boring precisely because I don’t want to be an obnoxious, boring guest. And was I like this as a sixteen or seventeen year old? (I graduated H.S. before hitting 18) Not really. Back then I was rather wooden and bland; a mediocre if budding intellect. Not a terrible student, but not a great one either. Meanwhile, I was quite unschooled in peer mini-culture. I’m not sure if I belonged to any clique, or category of human, cool or not. I was ordinarily conformist, having no dyes or gel in my hair or piercings anywhere on my body. Fashion bored me, so my clothes were non-descript, lacking anything pastel, studded on leather, or padded on the shoulders. I may have gone to a dance or two, and tried to ape the dance styles the eighties prescribed. So, like everyone else I jerked and twitched with quasi-geometric movements to pert, synthy pop songs, but I was no one’s ideal dance partner. On the whole, I may have felt like an outsider, but I didn’t even know what “smoker’s corner” was, nor did I frequent principals’ offices to face severe chastisements or disciplinary actions. And yet, looking back, it was a chastening time for me at Acalanes. I felt dull, a spiritless non-entity. Despite a modest political bent*, which inspired awkward diatribes about the politics of places like Nicaragua, which I aimed at hapless listeners like Ralph Chase during my senior year, I lacked abiding interests or passions, which is a terrible thing for a youth. Actually, what’s terrible is to be young and not know what you’re good at, what you’re interested in, or what you want to do with the life that’s about to change.

There’s one thing that each of the panelists spoke to that I will heartily agree with: teachers, who will also agree that one should not finish sentences with prepositions, are indeed the unsung heroes of our high school experience. I can think of few things about them that have not aged well. My memories are of kind, patient, good-humored people who cared about kids and likely could not afford to retire in a luxury condo in Lafayette. Seriously people, especially those of you who live and work in D.C., let’s do something about that. For me, a special shout out goes to Mrs. Meek, a lovely, soulful English teacher. And even the curmudgeonly types (messrs Fee and Dietz come to mind) deserve a place in my heart, whether they thought highly of me or not. So, what is left to say about high school that wasn’t said by someone at this event? There’s more to come, Matt promised to an appreciative audience and panel. For now, this reunion had a little of something for everyone who attended any eighties year at Acalanes High in Lafayette: A few stories about alcohol and hallucinogenic drug misadventures; a rumination about ethics in auto-shop; memories of rivalry and back-stabbing in high school journalism; a bad review of the Cow Palace as a concert venue; social commentary about digital media, the black hole of the internet, changing parental styles, and with a nod for those who remember Stan Oberg’s AP class in French, a touch of epater le patriarchie. What did I get from this? Well, if Matt’s remarks about all-nighters at the Round-Up or at someone’s nearby home are anything to go by, then I got another enactment of that not-going-to-parties FOMO thing. Think I need to figure that one out. Other things I have figured out, maybe, which is why I’m okay showing my face at these things now, however much I mingle amongst the crowd. See, I figure that reunions like this are partly about being pulled back into something. You come to have some fun, show off your better-aged self maybe, or share a little wisdom, get a few things off your chest, or effect a little reckoning on some issue or two. We think we have moved on from the past, but if I may play my seasoned therapist card here, I’ll share that we’re never really moving on when we’re looking back. These last two years have been our years of reunion amid an era of revision. Me too. I’ll slip out the back again, got a beer to drink, a wife/chick to go home to and kiss, and a gopher in my yard to hunt.

*Actually, I was quite outdone in this respect by an Israeli foreign exchange student whom I met senior year, whose name I can’t recall– I lost touch with him– and I can’t find him in the yearbook of 86′. Anyway, his knowledge of and seriousness about politics was on another level. While my classmates were enjoying or languishing away the last days of senioritis, we’d hang out and talk in the library at lunch and he’d practically pin me against the book stacks, giving me his doomsday, pro-Israel vision. We were still talking about it on the last day of school. In fact, I think the last serious words that any classmate said to me at Acalanes while I was still at school–and I now think the meaning more contextually layered than what was then intended–was his gravely spoken pronouncement: “Graeme, you know that there can never be any peace!”

So, we ask senior analysts: do you really want to know all the shit we want to say to you as parents/instructors, objects? Maroda (2022) suggests there’s something of a “developmental tilt” phenomenon happening here: Are senior analysts truly responsive to the patient’s needs, or might developmental deficit theories allow a senior analyst to identify with the patient who lacked early nurturing, thereby bypassing that person’s threat as a voracious adult? We can be seen as eager children, but with strong limits defined, we are called upon to perform “mature tasks” as analysts – not something in the realm of the good-enough. What do supervisors want here? This creates a confusion (Ferenczi, 1933) that is only solved if you are seen doing the work the way you are told to do the work, which subjects a clinician to projective identification, because a supervisor can identify with a protoge and be satisfied. In one of our institutes, an ongoing joke circulates about an analyst who thought she was told ad verbatim to tell her patient that what he wanted was for her to “water his balls” like someone would water plants to make them grow. This was a message that a supervisor told the analyst in a humorous and contemplative moment, though what unfolded was an equally humorous incorporation of the supervisor figure rather than an internalization of his thoughts and analytic stance. The analyst actually spoke the supervisor’s exact formulation to the patient, who not surprisingly got up and left, outraged. Examples like this reflect an eagerness to please the adult/parent/supervisor as a vulnerable child would, perhaps even mimicking a supervisor’s expressions. Moreover, supervisors sometimes use their supervising hour to relax between their own clinical sessions, which may create moments where they speak more freely.

So, are principals at institutes going to allow newcomers to change things? Or should we, the newcomers, simply do as we are told? One of us had a one-time consultation with an experienced senior foreign analyst. After discussing eroticized aspects of transference-countertransference pertaining to the case, he commented that we’d have a hard time explaining what was going on in that case to another senior analyst without that person becoming suspicious of acting out behavior within the case’s treatment. Regarding supervision, the foreign analyst observed: “You will have to dance the dance”. Not exactly “fake it until you make it”, but maybe “fake it until they think you make it”.

How false might a professional self become in this kind of atmosphere? Stumbling, hesitant, overworked, we hold fast to illusions, as Winnicott (1951) suggested, of a mediated space between ourselves and our objects, between inner and outer worlds, of fantasy and play, that would serve us well in our training. The capacity for illusion formation enables creativity, makes us participate well, be flexible in our thinking, not fixed in ideas, serving a false position of delusion. We’ve kept hope. Things changed during training without us noticing. Now we might differentiate from former supervisory figures and alter how we separate from objects. We might observe a shift in how we relate to our patients, especially upon their leaving us. We’d feel excluded, dropped even as we eventually let them go, but with more equanimity, perhaps. We’re not the primary objects after all, Steiner (2008) reminds us. 

Disillusionments. Disappointments. We can be rejected yet—in short, fail—or else we can be told “no” with respect to various requests or demands, or worse still, we can be told to wait, or to endure perennial tasks, extra consultations, more work and learning. There is always more, we’ve thought greedily and warily, and it will all seem like a privilege if there is a carrot of acceptance, plus something more still, at the end of a non-linear process. We understand that this doesn’t happen to everybody. The prosaic, tacit basics of inclusion and exclusion: surely, not everyone is enfolded into the analytic community and thereafter practices happily as psychoanalysts. There have always been runts in classes, outliers in groups, haven’t there? We think psychoanalysis doesn’t serve the delusion that it’s different in this respect, though Tucket et al (2008) report that at psychoanalytic federation conferences training analysts speak of their reluctance to reject members, thinking it tantamount to professional murder. Well, it seems we give and receive a taste of blood along the way: fielding reviews with comments that paint with broad strokes and linger in our neurotic minds; meanwhile, we push back with anonymous online feedback, suggestions for how seminars can be improved. 

Some amongst us have been more ambitious, having extended their disappointments and their capacities for illusion to the realm of social unconscious. At the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, a faction of students and faculty collaborated in 2021 on what they’d topically call the Anti-Racism Task Force (ARTF) Report. Seventeen pages deep, the report lamented what it termed the “realization that we are implicated in creating an organization that many would identify as racist and elitist. We feel very deeply that this is not who we are or what we are about”. Established in June 2020 amidst the furor surrounding the killing of American citizen George Floyd, the ARTF sought to review policies of the center’s psychoanalytic education division, its procedures and standards, to identify areas of exclusion, inequity, inaccessibility, and racism, and to make recommendations for changes necessary to become an equitable, accessible, inclusive, diverse and anti-racist psychoanalytic community. Among the report’s findings were criticisms of an overly subjective application procedure that rendered applicants susceptible to interviewer bias; that application forms lacked explicit statements regarding anti-racist policies, and that requirements for participation were too rigorous.  

More specifically, the report challenged the use of ambiguous terms like “suitability” and “analytic process” in policy statements, plus the lack of clear and transparent guidelines for admissions as well as the tracking of candidate progress within the program; that step-by-step procedures for recognizing bias in the assessment of candidates were lacking, and that no procedures determined the efficacy of requirements that diverged from those of The American Psychoanalytic Association (ApsaA) or the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). Within weeks a faculty response was published, bristling in defense of program integrity, and providing data that disputed the ARTF’s premise that recent admissions trends reflected a lack of racial diversity. The call for more transparency, plus so-called “objective” standards further seemed to offend the sensibilities of some. Amid the distance of the contemporaneous Covid crisis, murmurings across Zoom calls bemoaned this would-be “reification” of training standards, plus a general atmosphere of “calling out”, which seems to live in binary opposition to a fear of being called out. Some kind of illusion was under threat. Suddenly, it seemed that an analytic stance of “not knowing”, of neutrality, might be re-cast as hapless denial, or worse, a form of ethical cowardice. In seminars, presenters speak of not knowing, evincing an ethic of humility and calm, speaking to the presumedly like-minded about the value of an analyst’s discomfort. Ultimately, we stir over an aggregate of critiques, challenges, some that insult, others less so, that cut back and forth across contexts. Today, we wonder how many will have noticed the altered flavor, the audacities of candidate complaints pushing back—the upped ante of illusion and disappointment. 

References

Ferenczi, S. (1939/1988). Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24:196-206

Freud, S. (1913) On Beginning the Treatment. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 12: 121-144

Gabbard, G.O., & Ogden, T.H. (2009) On Becoming a Psychoanalyst. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 90: 311-327

Junkers, G., Tuckett, D., & Zachrissson, A. (2008). To Be or Not to Be a Psychoanalyst. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 28: 288-308

Maroda, K. (2022). The Analyst’s Vulnerability. London and New York:Routledge.

This entry presents memories of training, plus ideas of what training could be. It is grounded in the experience of two analytically oriented clinicians from different countries, with variable training methods and institutional cultures. It is also premised in the idea that psychoanalytic practice is born of rigorous learning, affording patients a deep exploration of their inner lives. It assumes that all psychoanalysts were once candidates in training, and analysands before that, and must learn their discipline with patience, diligence, and courage. Training is therefore the most important aspect of Psychoanalysis. 

Perhaps. Some questions contaminate this supposition. What is the quality of instruction in an accredited program, of supervision? What is the quality of experience within an analytic community that is reflective of localized cultures but not necessarily the broader world that psychoanalysis inhabits. How rigorous are the standards for completion of analytic training, and are those standards changing in some institutes, and for what reasons? Further, is the training experience, locked as it is within a protracted evaluation process, a true preview of the analytic identity, or “voice” that a candidate is encouraged to develop but might not truly develop until after qualification as an analyst occurs (Gabbard & Ogden, 2008). Moreover, seminars, supervision, and evaluation may restrain the gestation of that holy grail that is psychoanalytic identity. That such questions exist suggests a learning experience that invites illusions only to then dissemble them, yielding a pool of psychoanalytic professionals left to their own devices. They have learned theory, become skilled in technique, aware of countertransference reactions as if they were the names of their own children—or so they wish. They have accepted and endured the limits and disappointments of training that mirror the limits and disappointments of psychoanalysis.  

We recall the admonitions of old supervisors, such as one who, in an early seminar, suggested why the process of analysis would be explained in plain terms to analysands, emphasizing the basic recommendations ala Freud (1913), but not what might later unfold.  “You don’t want to know how sausage is made,” the supervisor quipped, implying that exposure to ideas would not only disappoint, but elicit revulsion. Psychoanalysis, we inferred, could get ugly. We recall another senior analyst offering a parody of informed consent: “What sort of person would say that they have read and understood provided information about treatment and had taken the opportunity to ask questions; that they understand their participation to be voluntary and that they are free to withdraw at any time, without giving a reason and without cost. Would they consent if they heard the specialist saying that they might regress to an almost infantile state, that they might find out that part or even most of their lives has been lived as if it were a lie, or that such discoveries would happen in a context where there is no guarantee of improvements (Ferenczi, 1933), and that the process itself might take unexpected turns during an unpredictable duration.

We’ve wondered if we’d be as jolted in our training, given our generally less naïve advancement. After all, we’d arrived at a point in our careers, thinking ourselves ready for a deepening experience. We had undergone several interviews when applying to our programs, explaining to numerous individuals why we wanted to become psychoanalysts. These interviews are the early rites of psychoanalytic training. Under the auspices of standard, we’d come to understand criteria for accepting candidates, like one’s “recognizing the existence of the unconscious”, or the need to demonstrate the “non-existence of too strong splits in personality”. We believe that the anxiety derived from such cloudy requirements can help an interviewer look at an interviewee as being capable (or not) of using the idea of the unconscious in a technical way, or simply as an intellectual idea.  We may not have been ideal candidates ourselves, but we might ask, what are ideal candidates for psychoanalysis? We might not be what institutes want, but are the institutes themselves good enough for us?

At some point we met our fellow candidates and felt varying degrees of envy and competition amid the genteel veneer of mutual respect. We had been accepted, but upon our path forward we would be vigilant about standards of instruction, or the openness of a program’s mini-culture to our influence, not just that of established pastimes. We would complain if instructors seemed to assume that we didn’t know much. We liked to think we had arrived at the Lyceum and had earned the right to be admired, even if we had braced ourselves for a humbling journey. At times, we’d think of ourselves as critics of psychoanalysis, not students. We may not have known how sausage is made, but we had our own ideas, and felt intoxicated by the initial encouragements, all those hearty welcomes and acknowledgements. Peers more senior to us, as well as volunteer mentors, made us feel at home, and reassured us whenever something unknown and strange occurred that the container of training was solid. We found our feet, but kept losing them afterwards, and soon thought this the new normal.

At these moments, further questions surfaced: Were we expecting an unconditional acceptance of the doubts and hesitations that we brought with us as candidates? Had we found a cozy place as we had on our analysts’ couches? One of us initiated his analysis five years before his training started. Is that a significant variable to look at? If a neurotic transference is established and the therapeutic alliance is firm, expecting to find a merely comfortable place is likely inappropriate. But that’s not what happens anyway. We’re not patients when we meet the senior analysts that interview us for training. We are would-be candidates, future members of the institutes that they have invested their time in and worked for. It may seem a hard rite of passage, this interview process, and concordantly, some candidates may be seeking families/communities at the institutes to which they apply. And so, as we experience disappointments, are we free to make them known, for it seems to us that there’s a deep interdiction when it comes to addressing senior analysts with our disappointments. These are the people who assess us, who will validate our ability to work with, and specifically treat people that need help, and that’s a very hard and serious task. Also, there’s an analogy here to a feeling that permeates parenthood: moments when parents have their children go through something that they feel they failed at or struggled to do at corresponding times in their lives.

A man looks down upon a moth that is fluttering above a carpet surface.

I’m thinking of something I don’t know. I’ve heard of enigmatic messages, and more specifically of something called intromission, as there is nothing happening here that can be called a tenderness. It is simply a reference point to an unknowable moment. My feeling is cold, detached, and tender in the broadest sense because of the gap between my life and that of an imminent victim. A notion of anal-sadistic objects comes to me, cut from a slice of film from memory—an hoary Spanish drama featuring cruel children beating upon a legless cripple, captured upon grainy black and white celluloid. Luis Bunuel: what a childhood he must’ve had to think this was worth expressing. Back to the moth. The fluttering, oblivious creature is an already defined, pre-digested figure. It has no meaning beyond its lesser form, its already brokenness, so the impending cruelty lacks meaning. It, the crushing sudden death, will make no sense to it. Its life will be reduced to a supposed nothing, but its life’s meaning only makes sense as part of a multitude. As part of a species, the moth has a purpose. Alone, separate from its group, its pack, it is asking for its own end.

What was the story here? Why did it separate from its familiar others, and is this what moths do? A scientist would know. This is the kind of question, after all, that scientists do know. If not, they’ll at least have a specific name for the kind of scientist that knows things about moths. Well, it seems to have been searching for food. Nothing surprising there. Don’t blame you, pal. Been there, done that. Feeling peckish myself, though you’re not my type, actually. Anyway, I get it. Sometimes, you have to stray from home, from the breast, to find that sticky globule of sugar on the floor, that crusty residue of bread. Everything that lives has gotta eat, even in the face of death. Last supper, and so on. The difference with us humans is that we think we know when death’s coming. Yeah, we know because we’ve noticed our brethren hit the ground and not get up; some of us have seen them close their eyes and not open them again. At times, if unlucky, we’ve seen one another get eviscerated, annihilated—blown or torn to pieces, and disappear, rendered meaningless. That’s how it seemed when I witnessed something like that in my life. In the human world that’s called trauma. It’s called trauma because we’re invested with something called memory.

You’re lucky, I suppose, watching you enjoy your last meal. You don’t have memory, or fear. You can’t. You probably don’t even have pain. You’re virtually broken, a nothing. This will mean nothing to you, what I’m about to do. Above all, you won’t understand what’s happening, even when you perceive the looming threat in that split-second in which you attempt flight. It will be too late because I have been patient in my cruelty. I have hovered my hand over you and slowly descended to the point in which the final, decisive strike can be made. You have not noticed soon enough. You have been enjoying your meal, your short life and all of its pleasures, and your reflexive, signal danger mechanisms that ordinarily served you to this point have let you down. It’s okay. This was meant to be. You are small, insignificant, and a nuisance, and though it seems gratuitous, I must establish my control, my dominion over this space. See, I imagine that your brethren will be watching off to the side, taking note of the warning. Or not, if they’re as stupid as you—if they’re not paying attention, not learning about power, un-sentient and thus unaware of individual life. Alright, enough of this. This has already taken up enough time in my day. Life goes on. Well, mine will, at least. So long, pal. Try to relax when you notice what’s happening. Your short, brutish life was predestined, and maybe its point will make sense to you at some point. It’ll…wait, what’s that falling down towards me. It’s darkening and huge and…getting bigger. What the…

The question wasn’t the first thing the woman said. The first thing she said was hello, coupled with an inviting smile. Inviting, not yet leering. Initially, the question struck me as odd given that I hadn’t yet shown my otherness, as some are putting it these days. She sounded foreign, as I do. We are both distinguishable by sound, not by sight in an ever-race conscious and unconscious world. Did she know? Did she care, really, where I was from? That was the next thing she said, her first query: an invite in disguise. A flirtation, I gathered, perhaps one as old as time.

I’d glimpsed the moment ahead of time having gotten about ten seconds of notice. I was walking towards her, studiously, even ploddingly in the moment, feeling an inkling of exchange. “Uh, I’m from around here,” I replied, returning a vacuous gaze. Now I was studiously uninteresting, hoping to passively discourage. I smiled thinly, circled a finger in the air, suggesting at best an ambient residency. As I turned away, I caught a last glimpse of the woman’s smile, now lingering until a last moment of possibility. I half expected her to unleash a trailing appeal, or else to hurl rejection-inflected insults at me. I heard nothing, so in the moments that followed I thought of other moments—moments of horror, joy, and something in between, that come and go, fleetingly and not—interspersed with fateful decisions.

Prior to the encounter, I’d been daydreaming of news stories from South Africa, and another from Indonesia, about two women killed by predators: the first by a shark, the second by—get this—a python! The first one felt especially tragic because the person was on vacation. How cruel, I think, and then darkly riposte: that’s a real spoiler. She’d decided to go for a morning swim near a beach house and was wading through waist-high water when a Great White speared its way through a wave and bit her in half. Her remains were later found nearby on the seabed. Certainly not something anyone would expect as they plod along amid seemingly quiet water, minding one’s own business. I wonder if she’d been daydreaming at the point of impact.

The second incident occurred during the course of a person’s workday, so somehow that equates in my mind to a more readied, bracing state, and therefore somewhat less of a victimization. Work is a derivative of the hunt, so…guilt? No, not quite. How about the thing about being on vacation, as in being at rest, off one’s guard–the fear of going to sleep. Yeah, that feels truer. The bizarreness of thought is perhaps belied or rivaled by that of the actual story, in which the victim walks into a jungle from her village—apparently a daily occurrence (can’t recall what her job was)—only to be met by the hungry serpent, which then consumes her entirely.  The evidence of this grisly event unfolded following her disappearance, which led to a search of the jungle by villagers and the discovery of the now quite-bloated python, which was then killed and soon dissected, revealing the poor woman’s still-intact body. The stupidity of that snake is rivaled by my own asinine imaginings: did it give itself indigestion? What is the escape plan when you’ve killed an eaten something that is so big you can barely move? Anyway, greed is a deadly, punishable sin, after all.

I know what you’re thinking. The woman in the street with the inviting smile/leering come on is not a predator per se. I did think her a seducer, possibly a prostitute. It wasn’t exactly difficult to walk on from what some might call a “trigger” moment. Instead, it stirred a contemplation of desire and how it is communicated. See, I imagined another kind of unfolding: a scenario wherein I pause, indulge a further inquiry or two, and in so doing I encourage further action. In this reverie I pass a threshold, enter a domicile that is shadowy and unkempt, one-half a house of ill-repute, otherwise a disheveled, multiple-occupant space. From that point onwards, the invitations become blunter. Do I want to have some fun? Yes, I might nod, almost obligatorily. The woman would mention a number, omitting the word “dollars”, plus a body part to signify price and specific action; also, the air of flirtation would quickly subside, perhaps disappear abruptly. She absents herself for another protracted moment, leaving me alone with my thoughts, a premature regret. The lights are dimmed, the stage is semi-prepared, but the pants are still on and the doors are not yet locked, and if I dashed through a wave, I could escape from this escape from something, especially as I eat lightly, for the most part.

Well, none of this is happening, I think to myself amid the fresh breeze and the light, wholesome day. The flirtation: it came and it went like a pest, albeit one with a certain slatternly allure. Where am I from? Where am I going? That’s a better question. I’m choosing…for now. Always now.

Had a dream last night that the world was different from the way it is. I mean, in a way that I couldn’t put my finger on, but something was missing. Something big yet abstract, kind of, like a way of being, of thinking. The manifest contest (not sure where that term came from) was plain enough, as in not weird. Dreams are weird sometimes, aren’t they? It’s curious that no one ever came up with an idea to think about dreams and what they mean about our psychology. If they had I’d know because I’ve been a psychologist for twenty-five years: I’ve treated kids in school and hospital settings; talked to parents in family conferences; spoken to couples, using the Gottman method; treated adult individuals with conditions ranging from everyday depression, to addiction problems, to phobias—even some psychotic behaviors. The model has been eclectic, employing a range of behavioral theories, but mostly I’m a traditionalist. I know it sounds corny, and some of my peers don’t like to admit this, but at some point, you have to think back to the founders of the profession. You have to acknowledge that the father of modern psychology, William James, knew what he was talking about. Anyway, back to the dream, which was pretty true to life when it came to the physical aspects: the setting was like a school, all modern with its white or off-grey walls, sleek and tidy architecture; its smooth, uncomplicated design, configured so that people could move easily, funnel in and out of spaces like they might swish into a sink-hole. The only thing, as in physical thing, that was missing, was a defined space for the conversation I was having with this group, as in no room per se. The conversation was about a kid with a phobia. It was about a kid we called Little Hans.

             I’m not saying it wasn’t his real name, but there was a sense that it was a pseudonym. No one explained that he was of German heritage, or why his parents kept referring to him as “little” Hans. We stood around in a circle, my colleagues and I, in the middle of this expanded space I’ve described, trying to figure out what to do about “little” Hans, who had a fear of horses apparently, which some thought not a big deal because…well, can’t you just avoid horses? They asked. It’s not like this is nineteen hundred and we need the damned beasts for everything we do. So, while one or two joked about things like that, myself and one or two others focused on the task at hand and took seriously the treatment plan, which we’d need to complete soon and submit to the county so as to ensure reimbursement for the quarter. There was a stranger in the midst, a short guy with old-fashioned glasses, kinda old-looking, who had an accent—possibly a German accent—who kept saying odd things about Hans’ phobia being a displacement of something, though he wouldn’t say of what exactly, and that little Hans’ life was “uncontained” and compared that “phenomenon” to the manner of the discussion, as if that were relevant. I didn’t know where he came from or who he represented. The kid’s family, maybe? Anyway, we sort of indulged his nuisance comments but managed to focus the discussion soon enough, especially on the matter that this Germanic guy was not talking about: namely, what do we do about the kid’s phobia?

             My main idea had to do with empathy. I’m known for this. I can usually find the angle that facilitates empathy, which has a healing impact for the patient. Let’s have litt—I’m just gonna call him Hans—think about the experience of the horse; the horse’s feelings, not his. Hans is nine years old. He can do this. He can consider that the horse is some other horse’s daughter or son—we don’t know if the gender of the horse matters, or whether horses are gender fluid—or whether the horse is another horse’s mother or father…or uncle…or cousin. That was other people weighing in with those relations—a bit gratuitous I thought. We’d gotten the point. Next, I thought we could have Hans make out a pros and cons list: everything that is good or bad about horses, or he could add a section about things he doesn’t know. Meaning, he might not know all that he likes or dislikes about horses. On this point, the German guy, who had gone quiet for a spell, seemed modestly approving. He was nodding tentatively, muttering something about not knowing. Weird guy—named Samuel Friend, or something—he seems to like not knowing about something. We moved on. Someone thought to add EMDR tapping procedures to the mix. Funny, but anytime someone suggests this, they like to mime the action, as if we wouldn’t get it otherwise. Problem is, no one’s had more than stage 1 training on EMDR on that so we’d have to refer out, I think. Can’t do that. A colleague of mine who was in the dream who has a socially conscious angle to most of what he brings to the table spoke of institutional speciesism and the fact that historically horses have been subject to widespread abuse so they are traumatized. Everyone agreed but wondered what that had to do with Hans since he was afraid of horses, not the other way around. He said that’s true but thought his point built upon mine and therefore Hans could be moved on another level to think about the horse’s experience, not just his own.

             Are you suggesting that horses have memories that they inherit from the experience of the species? Asked the guy who I think was named Samuel Friend, who was also bristling at the notion that he was a fan of “not knowing” and saying that not knowing was more the thing of a guy named bionic or something who would emerge years after him. Friend said he thought Hans’ phobia was about a renunciation of his needs for gratification so he avoids going into the street or near any stable where horses are. Okay, by now this guy was really getting on my nerves. What was he on? Was he a psycho, and was he a patient who had slipped into our conversation, or “swished” in from some other place in the clinic, infiltrating our circle? Strange, but for a moment I was starting to think like he did, like there was a meaning to the lack of walls, a partitioned space for our discussion. I could say more, but my recollection of the dialogue gets murky after this, suggesting the dream had stopped, or that I woke up. I can’t remember. Dreams are like that, I notice. They’re always…I don’t know…unfinished. Also, I get the feeling I might be editing this in a way, like I’m adding something, or missing something. Jesus, there I go again, thinking like that guy. By the way, I think he left the circle at some point, sort of drifted off like he didn’t belong—like he was realizing that finally.

I have to snap out of this. I have to deal with “Little” Hans, about whom his family is calling. He’s letting us down, his parents complain. For some reason, riding horses is really important to them, or to the father anyway. They bought this horse for Hans for his birthday. He’s being ungrateful. The father’s the one who’s leaving me messages, sounding very strident; very harsh. Listening to his messages, I’m having another idea: can’t they just shoot the horse, get rid of the problem. But that’s not helpful, I soon remind myself. I should call the father back, let him know we’ve got a plan, that we know what we’re talking about; that we know what to do about Little Hans.