First off, I want to state that my post, The Couch, First Session, got more hits on its first couple days than any post I've ever written, and I don't know why. Is it that in questioning the validity of the DSM-5, and the efficacy and safety of psychotropic meds, people want something deeper? Is it the freak show effect-who are these weirdos? Is it a general interest in something you've heard of but didn't know much about? I'd very much like to know, so if you have any thoughts about it, please share them.
This is meant to be a follow-up post, where I write about what it's like for me to be an analyst. In later posts, I'll go into more detail about what it's like to work as an analyst. Appropriately, I'm going to free-associate.
One admittedly small way my training has helped me-and this is mainly from my own analysis-is in finding things. You know when you misplace something, and you look all over for it, and you can't find it? That doesn't happen so much anymore. Instead of trying to figure out where it could or should be, or methodically rooting through drawers and cupboards for hours, I free associate. I just relax and wait for the first thought to pop into my head, and then I go wherever that thought seems to indicate, and most of the time, I find what I'm looking for. If that were all analytic training had done for me, I'd eat my hat, but it is a perk.
Another change I've noticed in myself is what I call "The Vampire Effect". As a medical student and resident, I found myself looking at people's veins. Not just patients, mind you. Friends, family, the new acquaintance who was wearing short sleeves when he shook my hand. My eyes would wander, surreptitiously, I hope, to the antecubital fossa, and I'd think, "Hm, that's a pretty nice vein. I could get blood out of that." No doubt this habit was related to the fact that the better I was at drawing blood, the more sleep I could potentially get on call. And I'm grateful that it seems to have faded.
But something similar happened with my analytic training. Something related to a skill I needed to develop to become an analyst. Something that is experienced by other analysts and analytic candidates, but less so or not at all by most others. ( I really hope the random Joe walking down the street doesn't spend time thinking about getting blood from people's veins). It's a way of thinking analytically, which sounds pretty obvious. But you get in the habit of listening for latent content, and for recognizing that there are underlying unconscious processes going on all the time, and that manifest content is not always what it seems, and that unacceptable thoughts and feelings often appear in other guises.
All well and good, but try telling the friend who believes he's never had an irrational thought in his life that he chose his profession not because he "just happened to like it", but because he feels competitive with his (father, mother, spouse, sibling, cat, take your choice). Or telling the friend who "forgot" he had a meeting with his boss that he has conflicts about his aggression towards authority figures.
The responses you get, if you're foolish enough to say things out loud, are along the lines of, "Oh, please, don't give me that psychobabble, I just forgot." And you respond with, "Okay."
But meanwhile you're thinking, "A repressed memory is a forgotten one from the subjective point of view of the individual in whom repression has taken place. Indeed, we may remark parenthetically that we don't know for sure whether there is any type of forgetting other than repression." (Brenner, Charles; An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis; New York: Doubleday, 1974, p.81).
I hope I'm not arrogant enough to think I always know what's really going on with everyone. In fact, if I did think that, I'd be pretty crappy at my job, because I wouldn't be able to listen for anything I didn't expect. But in the same way that medical training allows you to recognize certain constellations of symptoms and signs as a particular disease entity, one that someone untrained might miss, analytic training allows you to recognize certain basic ideas about conflict and the unconscious.
The point is, it can make you a little nuts if you see stuff that other people don't, especially family members, and I think it makes you gravitate more towards being around other analysts, or people who are trained to think analytically.
The first class I took as a candidate was, not surprisingly, Introduction to Psychoanalysis. One of the readings for that class (I can't seem to find it), described qualities necessary to practice psychoanalysis. There were things like, patience, selflessness, comfort with silence, openness, lack of judgement. It made Psychoanalysis sound like a monastic order. I think that's pretty close to how it feels. There's a definite religious quality-the institute I'm affiliated with is like a shrine to Freud:
