Work Block: The Role of Work in Mental Health

L.Y. entered analysis because of recurrent deep depressions and not at all because of any work difficulty. The following analytic incident was a quite unexpected dividend. She made a decent living playing a musical instrument and took for granted that she was “one of those people who just couldn't memorize,” a fact she mentioned in passing and without any thought of its being subject to change. I, too, paid little attention to the fact at the time, other matters being of much greater importance. On another occasion when we were getting some light on her relation to her beloved father, who was an excellent amateur choir conductor, she recalled that in her fifth year she had gone on a picnic with her mother and father and that it was one of the few pleasant family occasions she could remember. As they were sitting in the grass after their meal her father said, “My dear, sing us a song.” She opened her mouth to sing and nothing came out. She had quite lost her voice. In the context in which the memory occurred along with a revealing dream, we saw clearly that singing represented wooing and winning her father and that her mother's presence and her inner wishes set up a conflict which was expressed in the symptom.

Suddenly I recalled her inability to memorize music and suggested to her that, for her instrument, memorizing and singing inwardly were almost identical. That night, for the first time in her life, she was able to commit a whole movement to memory, an ability which she has retained ever since.

W.H. was in his third year in high school when he was sent to me for help. His mother had had a long and helpful analytic experience and recognized that if intensive therapy were not used her son would never get into college. For he was on the point of being expelled from a very lenient progressive school which had