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SELF-DISTRACTION: A HAZARD OF BEING A PSYCHOANALYST
In the Summer 1979 issue of The Psychoanalytic Review (Vol. 66, No. 2), Herbert Freudenberger and Arthur Robbins addressed “The Hazards of Being a Psychoanalyst” with particular attention to a professional syndrome loosely called burn-out, a creeping malaise containing, among other things, loneliness, cynicism, callousness, the inability to relate to patients, and loss of vitality. We concur with their remarks about the sorts of pitfalls that can lead to such a painful state of affairs. However, they neglected to identify as a pitfall the well-known propensity to view patients as empty, needy, greedy, demanding, and by implication, exhausting. As an old Talmudic saying goes, “What if the opposite is the case?” What if patients have something to offer the analyst? What if the hazards of being a psychoanalyst come, not so much from the patient's so-called neediness, but from the analyst's tendency to neglect the rewards of human intimacy, thereby viewing himself or herself as a psychoanalytic technician in an ungrateful land?
We are both in the middle years of psychoanalytic training and have not experienced the full impact of our career choice on longer range feelings. Burn-out may have countless internal and external sources but we are of the conviction that it is ultimately due to some disparity in the self's involvement in its own pursuits. This disparity, which becomes noticeable over time, is not caused by the quantities of time spent here or there. It is caused by the self's failing presence in its own activities.