Commentaries on ‘The Symbolism of the Story of Lot and his Wife’

Monica Lanyado's paper reminds me of a cartoon by Callahan about a psychoanalyst and his patient. The psychoanalyst is seated, facing away from the patient as is customary, nose in the air, in repose, absorbed. Meanwhile, behind him, his patient is on the floor - flattened, pinned beneath an upturned couch, in disarray, sprawling towards the psychoanalyst. The caption reads: ‘Basically, Mr. Wilson, what I seem to be hearing you say is, “Help”’.

The joke is on the psychoanalyst - the professional, out of tune, sublimely unaware, not in touch. And yet, of course, the joke exists in context; it sits within the well-established and valued tradition of psychoanalytic neutrality or detachment. It is important that the psychoanalyst keeps his distance, holds his breath, keeps time and space for thought and reflection. It matters too that he constrains his embrace to stay alert to the force and meaning of the entanglements of transference. The absurdity in the cartoon resides in the necessity of the (psychoanalytic) discipline.

And yet the patient is on the floor - in deep trouble, unable for the time being to deal with himself. It may be that the psychoanalyst's timely words will capture the moment, touch the underlying anxiety and help mobilize the patient to the upright state. It may well be too that the psychoanalyst's still composure provides sufficient containment - heightening, through resisting enactment, the potential for insight. All