Joining the Psychoanalytic Culture

IN THIS PAPER I WOULD LIKE TO TREAT the profession of psychoanalysis as though it were a culture. We are not born into this community, but choose to enter it. During our initial period of acculturation, we must learn its language, its moral codes, its behavioral ethics. We adapt to its hardships and find ways of enjoying the rewards it offers. Depending on our natural endowments, personalities, and experiential backgrounds we fashion different roles for ourselves in this culture. Some of us become leaders, perhaps even heroes or heroines, by venturing into the field's intellectual frontiers, or by pursuing political activities. Most are content to work the field, so to speak, largely applying the formulations of others. Our culture has its outlaws, renegades who violate the spoken and unspoken rules. Our language has many dialects, some so self-contained that even members of neighboring groups may find them hard to follow. We have our fads, and fashions, and those who try to capitalize on their glamour. We have our traditionalists, keepers of the faith, who remind us of the riches to be found in the writings of our forefathers. Customs also vary from group to group, though we may all be more alike than different if seen from a vantage point outside the entire culture.

This paper is the product of my contemplation on the initial period of adjustment into the psychoanalytic culture. It begins with a brief glimpse at the autobiographical and biographical statements of several psychoanalysts, who have written of their early career experiences. From these writings a composite picture is drawn, a picture that may fit no one precisely but, perhaps, many of us approximately.

I'd like to begin with Helene Deutsch, relying primarily on her autobiographical work, Confrontations With Myself(1973), and on Paul Roazen's study of her life and contribution to psychoanalysis, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life(1985). Although in her autobiography Deutsch was not ext