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People in therapy must inevitably deal with periods of time when the therapist is away. When therapy is on hold, their internal work goes on. In the absence of the analyst, writing can help keep them sane. As Plato said 20 centuries ago, our creative self is a “divine madness.”
I have had patients who need to grab pen and paper in the waiting room, scribbling notes following an intense or moving session. The patient and the analyst become artists for each other, a form of mutual storytelling. And when the analyst is away, stories go on. In these moments we are artists without our analyst. And for those who find writing compelling, we turn to writing to hold the howling, swirling ideas racing though our head—garbled fragments that are hard to process.
Writers can't help but write. They take their unprocessed raw emotions, and with imagination, translate that into the language of their narrative. Some have no choice but to write in various forms. Poetry. Fiction. Plays.
Writing becomes a form of therapy and helps us see what we cannot see with normal vision. Ironically, to express experience beyond words, the writer feels compelled to put that experience into words.
What inspired this issue's Creative Section was a reading at McNally Jackson Bookstore in New York City, When Shrinks Are Away. Susan Shapiro, who teaches writing at New York University and has published Unhooked: How to Quit Anything (co-written with her addiction therapist, Fred Woolverton; Shapiro & Woolverton, 2012) and other books she says “her family hates,” organized the
evening and invited authors to read pieces they had written on the subject of vacationing therapists.
Following are five poems and a poetic narrative submitted for this issue, in which the writers capture bursts of unabandoned expression when their analyst was away.