In the past year, psychoanalysts have been seen, heard, read, quoted, and commented upon in a lot of public venues. NBC, NPR, CNN.com, Human Rights Watch, the New York Times, U.S. News and World Report and other media sources have taken an interest in analysts. The press sought out analyst commentary on tragedies of the day, mined the APsaA scientific program for topics of interest to psychiatrists, and printed analysts' articles and letters to the editor. Reporters wrote of analysts and creative writers together exploring the writers' imagination and conveyed to readers and listeners information about the practice of psychoanalysis.
APsaA's new Director of Public Affairs, Dottie Jeffries, who previously served the association as marketing/public information consultant, initiated and/or facilitated many of these media contacts through press releases, press kits, cultivation of media contacts and hosting journalists at our national meetings.
Gail Saltz makes regular appearances on NBC's “Today” show. “Today” co-host Katie Couric introduces Saltz as a psychiatrist from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Couric and Saltz have talked about a number of topics — post-partum depression, phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, women and sexuality, and dating tips for single moms among them. They talk as friendly contemporaries.
Saltz also answers viewer questions submitted via e-mail. She has introduced such dynamic concepts as ambivalence, displacement, trauma, loss, anger, transmitted shame, guilt, and inhibition. She rarely, if ever, recommends psychoanalysis as such, but she does inform viewers about treatment approaches that might be helpful for their problems. She has suggested primary care providers, gynecologists, the American Psychiatric Association, and APsaA as referral sources.
Deborah Peel has appeared on both “Today” and NBC's nighttime news magazine show, “Dateline.” In the wake of the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who killed her five children while responding to auditory hallucinations, Peel informed viewers about the symptoms of post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis. In addition, Peel is now working as a contributor to Time Magazine.
In instances like Saltz's and Peel's, where an APsaA member has been contacted directly by the media and a direct relationship has ensued, Dottie Jeffries provides support and advice to the member if needed.
Glen Gabbard, known for his work in psychoanalysis and film, commented on the media for several reporters. In an interview with New York Times science reporter Erica Goode, Gabbard talked about schizophrenia and how the Academy Award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind necessarily distorted aspects of the illness.
Glen Gabbard and APsaA's symposium on the “Sopranos” caught the attention of journalist Sarah Boxer following a press release Jeffries distributed to the media. Boxer led her New York Times article about APsaA's “Soprano's” event with Glen Gabbard's confession: “I have had an intensive transference to Dr. Melfi for a long time.”
Leon Hoffman and Volney Gay each addressed the psychological underpinnings of pedophilia in the Catholic Church. Mis-identified in a U.S. News and World Report article as a psychiatrist, Gay, a psychologist and analyst, observed the power of the church as an institution to attract the “truly troubled” who seek relief from burdens of individual choice. Hoffman wrote a noted op-ed piece in Newsday about the contributions of victim transference and of issues of violation of trust and abuse of authority playing significant roles in the abuse incidents. Hoffman's ideas also appeared in a HealthScoutNews article () about girls, sports, and body image. The article, comparing responses of white girls and girls of color, addressed the impacts of media images on girls' perceptions of their ideal bodies.
The meetings of APsaA have attracted increased attention from Psychiatric News reporters, in large part due to Jeffries' cultivating ongoing relationships with these journalists. Psychiatric News, a newsletter with a large subscriber base, is published by the American Psychiatric Association. The 2001 Fall Meeting generated articles on Linda Mayes' research on the psychology and physiology of romantic love, Sydney Pulver's assessment that new knowledge in neuroscience changes psychoanalytic theory but not technique, and a panel presentation on how Santeria and spiritualism can affect the therapeutic process with some Latino patients
Psychiatric News reporter Joan Arehart-Treichel also covered the long-running APsaA discussion group on prejudice, where participants discussed how fear and envy can grow into hate and loathing but can be contained through conscious awareness. In cyberspace, CNN.com interviewed Lisa Mellman, who commented on the pitfalls of online therapy and the advantages of person-to-person treatment.
These examples collectively reflect a media image of analysts as part of the mental health mainstream, concerned with a variety of patient problems and with societal problems that have psychological impact. Although the press often identifies psychoanalysis with psychiatry, the media mirror also reflects diversity among analysts with respect to gender, professional degrees, and ethno-cultural interest. The “new psychoanalysis” seems well presented.
Psychoanalysis as a profession and a treatment also gets press attention. During APsaA's Philadelphia meeting in May, Newell Fischer was interviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Stacey Burling. Fischer provided basic facts about the field: Psychoanalysis generally takes place in four to five sessions per week, patients
lie on a couch and free-associate, and psychoanalysts have special training beyond their core training in psychiatry, psychology, or social work.
Jeffries began her pitch to Burling a good month before the Philadelphia meeting. She guessed that with our new president being a life-long Philadelphian, and our national meeting convening in Philadelphia, a story was almost a “slam dunk”.
Burling later interviewed psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elio Frattaroli about his new book Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Why Medication Isn't Enough. Frattaroli met Burling at the meeting and brought his book to her attention.
Reporters have occasionally pursued more sophisticated clinical matters. The New York Times' Goode explored the question of whether therapists should continue to follow Freud's admonition concerning self-disclosure to patients. She reported Owen Renik's view that judicious self-disclosure by the analyst can enhance the atmosphere and candor of the treatment. Goode has come to know many of APsaA's members over the course of a 20+ year career reporting on the behavioral sciences. She joined the Science section of the New York Times in 1998, after working at U.S. News and World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle.
On National Public Radio's “The Infinite Mind,” the program's host, psychiatrist Fred Goodwin, devoted a full hour to psychoanalysis. (Audio archives of this program can be heard at .) The program included an interview with documentary producer David Grubin, whose “Young Dr. Freud” aired on PBS this fall. The documentary highlighted the importance of Freud's self-analysis in his understanding of the origins of mental suffering. APsaA member Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, and honorary members Martin Bergmann and Peter Gay are interviewed in the documentary.
Also on Goodwin's program, Glen Gabbard, Susan Vaughan, and Elizabeth Young-Bruehl answered questions about the field and the treatment. What should people expect in psychoanalysis? Who is suited for this treatment? What is transference? Why use the couch? How has psychoanalysis changed since Freud? Why does it take so long? How does it differ from other treatments? Can psychoanalysis and medication be used together? Young-Bruehl described analysis as a transformative experience that has an emotional richness far different from the intellectual experience of the classroom.
Both NPR and the New York Times helped to convey some of the richness of that experience. Poet Diane Ackerman wrote in the Times of her experience of psychoanalytic therapy as a catalyst to creativity, leading to her book Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire. Ackerman compared therapy to lyrical poetry: “Both require rules, tremendous focus, entrancement and exaltation, the tension of spontaneity caged by restraint, the risk of failure and shame, the drumbeat of ritual, the willingness to be shaken to the core.”
In the Times' arts section, Sarah Boxer covered the Psychoanalytic Association of New York's symposium “The Apocalyptic Imagination: Daydreaming in an Era of Nightmares” [see “New Series Joins Writers and Psychoanalysts in New York,” TAP 36/2]. The symposium paired writers and psychoanalysts in an exploration of whether, in the wake of September 11, writers can still permit their own apocalyptic fantasies. Conference organizer and psychoanalyst Sandra Leong suggested that exploration in these dyads could help in understanding “the complicated relationship between trauma, fear, and mastery at the heart of all creative endeavors.” Dottie Jeffries was able to arrange coverage of this event on National Public Radio.
Sandra C. Walker, M.D., is a co-chair of the APsaA Committee on Public Information. She is a clinical assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. She has recently been appointed editor of FORWARD!, APsaA's new newsletter on “best practices”.