In the Streets and Out in the World: Being a Psychoanalyst in 2010

Normally when I hear someone talking about psychoanalysts, I think of Woody Allen and jokes about domineering Jewish mothers. I don't think of a pioneering program in a gritty industrial patch of Cicero, a Chicago suburb known as a historic hideout for Al Capone with its own brand of rough and tumble politics. … Morton Alternative High School has attracted lots of attention … and reports promising results helping those hard to reach … using psychology to help about 100 students cope with the emotional problems and social pressures common to life in neighborhoods where everyone struggles with crime, joblessness, violence and immigration problems [James Warren, Editor, Chicago News Cooperative, writing about the Analytic Service to Adolescents Program for The New York Times article, “More Than Academics at Morton Alternative,” which is available at: nytimes.com].

Sometimes I am as surprised as James Warren about where my work as a psychoanalyst has taken me. I remember being assigned for fieldwork to the Cook County Juvenile Court as a first-year social

work student back in 1973. I was devastated. I had wanted to be at Michael Reese Hospital in the Psychiatric and Psychosomatic Institute founded and directed at the time by Roy Grinker, M.D., a former patient of Freud's. I wanted to be part of psychoanalytic history! But, there I was at the Juvenile Court, practically working for the Chicago Police, a symbol of all that was wrong with the world in 1973.

Thirty-seven years later on Wednesday mornings I find myself running between my office in the Loop and west edge of Chicago, working with students expelled from high school for gang-related and violent behavior. Sitting in a group discussing walking away from a violent confrontation while maintaining respect on the street is as much “psychoanalytic” as sitting behind my couch in my office.

A recent discussion about “psychoanalytic identity,” on the “Members” listserve of the Ame