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IT WAS MY FORTUNE TO ENTER THE field of psychoanalysis at a time of ferment. The new and challenging ideas of Karen Horney (1937), (1939), unacceptable to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, led to her resigning from the faculty of that organization to establish with an eclectic group of colleagues a new teaching institute. It was hoped by all, that here the spirit of exploration would replace an atmosphere of dogma. In that new institute, I was a member of the first class; and Erich Fromm (1941) was part of the first faculty.
The following remarks are not a reminiscence or critique of Fromm, nor are they a distillate of my years in our profession. They reflect, however, what continues to be professionally exciting to me on a daily basis; they reflect work in progress.
I have never "cured" anyone; I feel, however, that I have helped a number of people in their efforts to live more fulfilling lives. As I consider my therapeutic role, certain activities and related concepts come to the fore as ones I use with growing confidence.
Though I do not like, after forty years, to begin on a negative note, the above allusion to the daily excitement of our work brings to mind a contrasting problem. This is the problem of boredom, a complaint about which one hears from colleagues of all ages.
When the analyst is bored, I believe something is going wrong, something not entirely engendered by the patient. A way I've found for dealing with boredom is to question the completeness of my own involvement; the chances are that I'm not fully listening, not adequately responding. And there must be good reasons. If,