Letter from the Editorial Board

An outsider's eye can be an objective one, but I have always longed to be an insider. My outsider feelings began in my family's history of migration. My grandparents on both sides were forced to leave their homes during the civil wars in China. My parents' generation continued that exodus, leaving China for the West. Most of my father's siblings studied in the US before moving back to Hong Kong. My mother's family instead came and stayed. The drive to keep moving seemed to take the deepest root in my immediate family. My parents met in Spain (the condensed story is that they each got a Catholic scholarship to study in Madrid), and I lived there for a few years before we moved to the US. After living in three states with my family, I moved on by myself for school. My brothers followed suit and are now spread out across the US and the world, similarly to my parents' generation.

With all the moves, I was the “new kid” many times, and like any outsider, I studied the people around me to figure out how I could fit in. It is part of what drew me to psychoanalysis. In the beginning of my studies, I wanted to help people as a way of establishing myself in a group. It is in the moments when I see someone hurting and I am not situated to help them that I feel the most “outside.” Conversely, being a psychoanalytic psychotherapist has been the way for me to establish myself at my clients' side. Instead of being a helpless witness, I can be a useful confidant.

My own analysis was my clearest encounter with my own unconscious, of course. However, it was during my internship that I consciously encountered someone else's. In meeting the minds of my clients, I learned that being on the inside was not always helpful, which was a difficult lesson to accept. I had to start letting go of my ways of finding a place for myself, as if one were already there. It was reassuring to think that there was an existing answer or way to help, and it was hard to relinquish that. Figuring things out wi