“I know no other word to describe what I feel. Love is made up of respect, enthusiasm, passion, platonic and erotic feelings, curiosity, caring, compassion, and deep appreciation that offsets the disillusionment that can lie in wait.”
Hall starts this collection with an inspiring story from the times when she was a young and inexperienced social worker in Psychoanalytic training.
“Greenwich House Counseling Center in the early 1970s… . I will always remember him—a middle aged, African American, homeless man, required to come to my clinic by the welfare department… . Mr. S. seemed to have lost everything.”
It was an accidental meeting of two persons, a young therapist and a patient. They both were assigned to the counseling center and to one another. Probably because of the involuntary nature of the beginning, there was some added oddness and anxiety in the air. Yet the therapist-patient pair seem to have developed an immediate interest in one another. Albeit an awkward one.
Hall was gently persistent in her pursuit to establish a human tie; she isn't pushed away easily despite the overt disinterest and some assaulting remarks of the patient. Patient says how would a “white chick—have nice clothes, a job, probably a family—how can my talking to you have any meaning?” When Hall gently perseveres, with some hesitation, S. reveals a secret. He is worried that Hall would despise him because he was stealing money to buy drugs and spent time in jail because of that. Hall in turn makes a comment that feels like a turning point. She says her job is not to judge him and asks whether the two of them could be curious as to how to make sense of what happened to him. After many such mini battles patient probably notices, what Hall calls ‘love’ of his
new therapist. S. leaves with her card as he mumbles a thank you on his way out.
As we all know, the ‘doorknob comments’ that our patients make on their way out are quite important. They usually provide a synoptic summary, in a few words, of what they didn't or couldn't articulate in the whole 50 minutes prior to leaving. Like a deeply shy person perhaps.
There are stories of very shy persons, some of them quite famous, who have declared their love to another person by scribbling the loving words on a piece of paper and showing it to the person. In times when it was not frowned upon, a cigarette package was one common and easily accessible surface to write a short love note on. One has a fleeting impression that the doorknob mumble of S. was one such scribbling.
A second section is a short story about adventures in the land of groups. Jane has a deep trust in human capacity to heal and thus she is not too embarrassed over her being a novice, an authentic and open one, and utilizes her professional naivete with her probably very old apprenticeship in helping others. Thus, a fascinating short section comes out early on, in the book.
“I had no training in group work, so I was flying blind. I began by introducing myself to seven men between age fifty and sixty-five.
We sat in a circle and after each of us said our names, I told some of my story first—that I was studying to be a psychoanalyst. ‘What's that?’ one man asked. They were curious so I told them about what I was learning—specifically how one's past can affect the present and how memories are often stored in the unconscious part of the mind. …Telling and listening to each other's stories was something they had never experienced. These men had been essentially alone.”
Hall continues; “Well, the first thing about analytic work is getting interested in the “whys” or “reasons” for what we do in life with benevolent curiosity. It opens a new door. But even more important, connecting to a trusted other can be lifesaving”…“Gentlemen, I have one request and that is to replace all criticism with curiosity.”
Page 34Perhaps for the first time these men paid and received attention in positive ways. We tend to forget that attention without judgement is what we all want—from birth and throughout life.
Hall wonderfully demonstrates how these patients found the stories of each other absorbing, and that lead to an interest and courage to tell their own.
We do become individuals as we feel like a part of a group. This “I in the we” opens the key to adolescence identities or any group for that matter. It raises the perennial question of how one may lose their individuality in a group that leads to what they mistakenly call group regressions, and mass hatred/violence. At the same time, one may find a core sense of individuality, selfhood in a group. So what is the difference is the natural question that follows.
A major difference probably is, the former is a group of differentiated, unique individuals focused on each other as friends. Latter is group of undifferentiated members focused on other groups as the enemy.
We are in a profession that carries a powerful tone of helpfulness and benevolence. Which is quite prone to create an almost prototypical image of an all loving, endlessly tolerant therapist. Jane counters it.
“I remember raising my voice in exasperation at my first analytic patient who had been complaining and raging at me for weeks. I was in supervision at the time and dreaded telling my supervisor that one day I angrily said: “Stop! I have listened to these complaints and insults for long enough. Now is the time to figure out what they mean—to figure out who, why, and what you're really talking about.” The supervisor, to my surprise, said it was about time!”
We tend to easily forget that Freud used plenty references to battle and war. Which is a striking contrast to the benevolent peaceful image of the therapist. Jane reminds us that, those may coexist, a spirit of a fighter and a spirit of a helper.
Winnicott talks about the ordinary hatred of the mother. Despite our wishes to underplay it, what he refers to is a real genuine hatred.
Or as Otto Will remembers in his analysis with Sullivan:
“And I said to him in anger, ‘I'm so angry I could throw you out the window.’ “ And he said, ‘No doubt you could.’ And later, when I got up to leave, I felt embarrassed and kind of ashamed of myself and I said, ‘You're really not like my father. My father used to say ‘no’ to me in a certain way that seems an awful lot like you do, so I suppose my anger is an example of father transference.’ Sullivan said, ‘No Doctor, I don't think so. I think at the moment you don't like me very much, and at the moment I don't care very much for you either!’ (Thompson and Thomson 1998)
With the section “Lets fall in love” we begin reading the story of Jane Hall, a young person who is interested in and curious about other human beings. ‘S.’, ‘members of the group’, ‘the patient Hall yells at.’
All of these were relationships embedded in love, and they have lived forever in Halls mind, as evidenced by their freshness after so many decades. She later on improvises on the central tune/theme of ‘love’ and uses different names—caritas, benevolent curiosity and such. All of which seem to be connected, similar and yet different. Just like the improvisations of her late beloved husband, the prominent jazz guitarist and musician Jim Hall.
Jane Hall uses love in a unique way. Unique in the sense that it is re-discovered, time and again, by every new generation of analyst/therapists. It is an all-encompassing love that floods well beyond the walls of our colloquial usages. “The way I see it, non-transferential love in the consulting room, not often talked about, happens over time. It does not preclude frustration or anger.”
One is reminded of Winnicott. “Regarding ‘analytic love,’ it may be asked whether Loewald uses the term as the opposite of hate in the conventional sense, or whether, like Winnicott, he uses it to speak of a quality of acceptance and attunement that contains and facilitates, a quality that more or less transcends love or hate in the ordinary sense.” (Fogel, 1996 pp 898).
Hall suggests that this is a capacity that can be considered as innate. As is well depicted in some forgotten notion of Sigmund Freud, the ‘effective
transference.’ “It remains the first aim of the treatment to attach him to it and to the person of the doctor. To ensure this, nothing need be done but to give him time. If one exhibits a serious interest in him, carefully clears away the resistances that crop up at the beginning and avoids making certain mistakes, he will of himself form such an attachment and link the doctor up with one of the imagos of the people by whom he was accustomed.” (Freud S., 1913, pp 139).
In this chapter and the rest of the book, we will follow the meanderings of what happens. I would say, Hall describes, in her unique and evocative way what happens when the shadow of the object falls on the ego. (Freud S., 1917).