Forty-Five Years of Psychoanalytic Experiences On, Behind, and Without the Couch

Along with other adolescents of the 1940s, I was drawn by the lore of the Freudian revolution to become a pioneer explorer of the new frontier of the psyche. I intended to be a scientist, a doctor, and a psychoanalyst. The couch was to be my laboratory table for dissection and study, my operating table for surgical cure, and my magical bed for day and night dreams. When I began my personal analysis while a medical student, I approached the couch with awe; I envisioned it as a shrine for the realization of my ambitions. I can easily recreate my uncertainty as I first ventured onto that horizontal slab on which I found, not a person, but a ceiling to stare at as I tried my skill at “free association.” I can remember my thrill as I got the hang of it and began to touch the depths of feelings I was pleased to discover I was capable of experiencing despite my intellectual veneer. Getting onto the couch became routine and welcome; getting off was another story. Especially at those times when I felt like I was deeply into something, I was reluctant to leave and even more reluctant to have to reachieve verticality and equilibrium as I dried my tears and reassembled my face-for-the-world.

In this first analysis with a bright, sensitive, kindly young woman, perhaps only ten years older than I, I felt confirmed in my belief in