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These articles demonstrate the ubiquity of unconscious communication from isolated situations to an entire analysis. Without the inclusion of unconscious communication, it is not possible to convey the depth and complexity of human experience that is part of every clinical moment.
Sixty years ago, as a freshman medical student, I first heard a lecture by our Psychiatry Professor, John Dorsey. He spoke to the first- and second-year classes once-a-week as an introduction to the human aspects of medicine. For two years, I heard one message from him: Human beings are whole people; they are driven by a love for life. They become ill when they turn away from parts of themselves that they can’t love and put them outside of themselves and then hate those parts. Health is based on the fact that “we are our own everything.” We heard this refrain repeatedly. Now, I did not know what this man was talking about, but I knew he was right. For years, I knew that those words were having a great effect on me and understood this to be unconscious communication.
I devote this epilogue to demonstrate how those words carried through unconscious communication and over many years changed my life. When I was 5 years old, my mother lost interest in me because of her mental illness. She was eventually institutionalized. My father and I moved in with my aunt and uncle. My father eventually moved out, leaving me with them. I would frequently spend time with my father. I became phobic about visiting my mother in the State Hospital. My father remained committed to her, visited her frequently, and encouraged me to visit her. I only occasionally joined him.
Of course, many years of my analysis, self-analysis, and analytic work have been devoted to developing the emotional strength to deal with the complexity of my experience, principally to use my trauma to contribute to the fulfillment and joy of my living which involved learning all I could from the past to develop a capacity to live well in the pre