Discussion of Jean Wixom's “Just Do It”

Jean Wixom's article “Just Do It” is a poignant story, frequently painfully so. It is a tale that helps one understand how wonderful a deeply committed psychoanalysis can be in transforming one's life. By that, I actually mean the lives of both analysand and analyst, not to mention affecting all the other people in their lives. This is a story about Jean and her analyst's commitment to not allowing her to flee treatment for the host of reasons—both real and psychological—that would send most individuals scrambling for the exit. If resistance ever needed any ammunition, Jean had an unimpeachable excuse for avoiding the painful work facing her. Here's a capsulation of her story and then some thoughts of what we might make of it.

Her opening sentence tells all: “It was a month after beginning my analysis when my husband's cancer was discovered in its advanced stage.” Her tale begins like the crack of a 2×4 hitting us square in the forehead. This “virginal” analysis, she notes, began as an “exhilarating experience.” It clearly differed from all her previous, though helpful, psychotherapies. This time, however, it differed not only because she was finally ready for it, she had also found the right analyst with whom to have it. He exhibited the right blend of “balance and directness and reserve” along with “his pithy, spot-on remarks,” a blend that captivated her curiosity from the start. It doesn't get much better than this, which brackets all the more painfully the calamitous news of her husband's life-threatening diagnosis. One might call this one of life's “cheap tricks,” that is, to present one with the very circumstance that they had all their lives hungered for (both wittingly and not), only to then say, “Sorry, not for you!” Thankfully, much to Jean's analyst's credit and her willingness to be helped, they both stared back at cruel fate and said, “I don't think so!”

It was not at all as easy as my glib commentary suggests. It was excruciating for Jean to have to be