In Conversation: A Dialogue on Psychosis, Psychoanalysis, and the Peer/Survivor Movement with Claire Bien and Marie Brown

Brown: As a person with lived experience of what is commonly called “psychosis,” what has drawn you to be interested in psychoanalysis?

Bien: What drew me to psychoanalysis was the positive experience I had with the very first therapist I ever saw, a third-year Harvard psychiatric resident at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. She helped me enormously at a time when I was deeply, deeply unhappy. Even though she didn't do intensive psychoanalysis in our work together (and we did work together), her psychoanalytical background—an inherent part of her psychiatric training—informed all of our interactions. Working with her allowed me to explore how I experienced the world and seek to understand the role that my thoughts, beliefs, and expectations of myself and others influenced how I responded to, and often acted in, the world. One does not engage in such deep work without it becoming an integral part of oneself and one's practice. As a result, I have always preferred seeing psychiatrists, who encourage me to explore thought, feeling, motivation, context, and understanding given my experiences and my perspectives on who I am and who I wish to be. I also like having the ability to ramble, with occasional observations that prompt further reflection and allow me to arrive at my understandings, with affirmation, rather than being subjected to what sometimes feels like intrusive or directive action.

The psychotherapeutic tradition of exploring the nature and sources of the varying traumas and hurts I've experienced throughout my life has also been important in my ability to reclaim my capacity to feel and to think independently, unhampered by the fear