Epilogue: Psychoanalysis From the Inside—Our Own Analyses

Psychoanalysis has been good to me and I can be as respectful of personal limitations as I can be optimistic about each mind's latent potential to continue its own unique development [after formal analysis ends]… . My present life feels enriched and more satisfying … . all now seems speakable … .

—Austin Silber (1996)

The articles in this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry speak to the experiences of four different analysts for whom analysis nurtured rich processes of growth and development. These writers didn't find their analyses to be smooth sailing, nor would some of their analyses be seen as following the “book” (Hoffman, 1994, p. 188). But each was as committed to psychoanalysis as their analysts were, and each found their way of weathering the storms that emerged in their lives and their analyses, sometimes cocreated by each analytic pair, to arrive at their own unique transformations.

After the sudden death of her first analyst, Deutsch found her way to a second analysis in which she did much more than metabolize and mourn the loss of her beloved first analyst. Wixom used her analyst's unconventional gift as an affirmation, inspiration, and organizer of her growth. Bornstein used disciplined self-analysis after he internalized the analytic method to articulate his own theory of analytic process. And in a process of soft assembly, Levin found and created experiences within as well as outside the analytic dyad that promoted her growth as a person and an analyst.

Growth, as these four papers reflect, is the goal of a good-enough analysis and can be viewed through the lens of complex systems theory as a unique, nonlinear, dynamic process1 that unfolds within and sometimes beyond the constrains of what is possible for each analytic pair over time (Coburn, this issue). Analysis thus has been good enough to these four analyst-writers, who each, as Elise writes in this issue, took the “huge risk [of] enter[ing] psych