My Experience as a Patient of Ernest Schachtel

JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 30, 1970:

First writing since Dr. Schachtel's departure for the summer. Miss him. I feel the need to communicate the experiences which are bringing more and more light to a dark and empty interior. The passing thought which comes and is allowed to disappear loses the significance that speech gives to it; more important, saying it to someone you care for. I am tense as I start to write. It is as if I am talking to Ernest. Sitting with my own thoughts and associations is new, but taking them seriously outside of my time with him feels incredible. Even now it is so clear that the affection and familiarity that I feel have to be cloaked in distance. I am so used to being silent and apart … I have trouble believing how much I miss the experience of his presence.

This was written shortly after Dr. Schachtel left for his summer holiday. It could have been written the day after he died.

I knew Ernest Schachtel only as a therapist. We had no relationship beyond the boundary of the therapy room, where we met at an appointed time for an appointed purpose. Invitations which he extended to visit him on Cape Cod during the summer holiday generated panic in me and were gracelessly ignored. Yet I knew him. I knew him through that unique awareness that comes when people share danger, tragedy, or intense struggle. I knew him as a comrade whose protective shield made it safe and profitable to disappear beneath the veil of sanity where one confronts the hidden horrors, deceptions, confusions and emotional conflicts that rob one of his realness. I knew him through the "therapeutic atmosphere" in which it was safe to be defenseless and feel devoid of definition or meaning beyond my puny narcissism. I knew him because the atmosphere was an extension of him; it was of his creation. I knew him through those reflections of me that came through him. I knew him because he allowed me to know him, as when he pulled me from the pit of despairing estrangement by