A Statement of Mission

Psychoanalysts feel a sense of purpose now, maybe even especially now. We know, and we see and feel every day, that what we do is at the center of the lives of those with whom we do it. So many of the sessions that have taken place since September 11 have been directly or indirectly shaped by the events of that date. Even when we and our patients are not thinking explicitly about the new dangers, the context of our lives has changed. A new sense of threat and precariousness dwells within us. There is at least a silent nuance of September 11 with us all the time. But in this changed world, we know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that what we do matters. We can see every day that the work to which we devote ourselves contributes to the lives around us, and thus to our own.

And yet, of course, we hope to offer something more than comfort. Just as we did before September 11, we hope to offer the opportunity for greater freedom. Years ago we were readier than we are now to conceive difficulties in living as neurosis, and to imagine that when neurosis was “resolved” (so the story went) the blinders would fall from the patient's eyes and the “entire view” would be there to see. In the postmodern world of the present day, we can no longer believe we know what that “entire view” is. We are now much more willing to take the position that any views—not only the views of an individual, but the views available within any culture—are a selection of the possibilities, a construction of experience that might have been constructed otherwise. For some time now we have not been able to accept that we merely uncover what we find in psychoanalysis; we participate in constructing it. We do not merely reveal; we influence. We work toward an awareness of the nature of that influence, but we know we can never grasp it all. Some of it we have no choice but to live out; some of it, in fact, we now recognize as mutative. The contemporary status of this position is reflected by the widespread acc