If there is any worry about the future of psychoanalysis, one need only look to Turkey for reassurance. There, thirst for psychoanalytic knowledge led a group of thirty mental health professionals to reach beyond the educational limits imposed by their national borders and make contact with the psychoanalytic West. Four years ago, Yavuz Erten, the leader of this group, posted a message to Ernie Wolf on the bulletin board of the self-psychology Web site (selfpsychology.org) inviting him to teach in Istanbul. Wolf, unable to fulfill the request at that time, gave my name to Yavuz.
That first cyber-communication was the beginning of a collaboration between Yavuz, the group, and me that culminated four years later in the formation of the Anatolia Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. The center, now a group of fifty-two psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, is dedicated to the learning and practice of the psychoanalytic psychotherapies in Turkey. My Turkish experience has reassured me about the future of the psychoanalytic therapies and certainly has kept my life interesting.
In October 1998 my wife Renée, a clinical social worker and a graduate of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program of the Chicago Institute, and I made our first trip to Turkey to teach the theory and practice of psychology of the self to a group of thirty psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists. Our plan was to combine our week of teaching in the mornings with the delightful opportunity of touring Istanbul with some Israeli friends who were to meet us in Turkey. Our daily seminars were to begin at 9:00 a.m. and continue until 12:30 p.m., when we would be free to visit with our friends.
Our teaching plan for the seminar was first to provide a theoretical foundation by teaching basic Freud and then to demonstrate how Kohut's ideas about narcissism and the self evolved as an extension of Freud's thinking. With this basic theoretical foundation, we would then be in a position to study clinical material from a self-psychological perspective. We would use the Australian film Muriel's Wedding to create a shared clinical experience that we could jointly study in depth. Next, Renée would present an in-depth study of a child psychotherapy; finally, I would present an adult patient of my own.
With no clear idea of the group's composition, we had no sense of what they would understand and how they might respond. To our delight, we got off to a good start. The first morning went very well, and the group insisted upon taking us out for lunch, where lively conversation continued until after 3:00 p.m. Since we didn't return to our hotel until nearly 4:00, it was too late to tour, so we rested before beginning the evening's activity with our friends.
The first day set the pattern for the week. We saw lots of the eager, curious, and hospitable Turks, a little of our Israeli friends, and none of Istanbul's fabled sights. Despite the aborted tour, we felt enriched and energized by our experience with the group. (Fortunately, we had planned a second week with our friends at a resort town on the Mediterranean, so our opportunity to visit with them was not lost.)
The success of the trip was marked by the group's request to continue meeting on the phone. They offered to call me every six weeks, at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, for a two-hour telephone meeting. My task was to plan what we'd talk about and conduct the phone conversation.
We have met on the phone this way over the last four years. Since film proved successful as a source of clinical material, we have studied such films as Ordinary People, Fried Green Tomatoes, Leaving Las Vegas, and Harold and Maude. I was startled by how tuned-in the Turkish therapists were to the nuances of American life. They understood the characters in the films very well. The mother in Ordinary People was absolutely understandable to them, and they loved Maude.
We discussed Ordinary People shortly after the Turkish earthquake of 1999. Many from the Anatolia Center were called upon to work with the survivors. Their direct experience of “survivor guilt” and our discussion of the behavior depicted in the film were serendipitous. As the Turkish therapists discussed their experiences-mostly involving male patients who were devastated and filled with remorse because they could not pull their loved one from the rubble—it seemed to me that what they actually were describing was not guilt but a deep humiliation over their impotence. They believed they should have been able to do the impossible and pull their people out, no matter what the situation. Their devastation came when reality confronted their omnipotent fantasy.
In addition to films, we've read and discussed an assortment of books and papers and have moved on to presentation of clinical material, both the group's and my own. In the intervening years I have made four more trips to Turkey. Renée has accompanied me on two of them.
Because I felt the Anatolia Center needed to hear American voices other than mine, we have arranged for Joe Lichtenberg, Anna and Paul Ornstein, and Arnold and Connie Goldberg to come to Turkey as visiting professors. About two years ago, after reading a paper I had written on e-mail supervision, a member of the group voiced her interest in this approach. After some discussion, we decided to experiment with group “e-supervision.” Our group has functioned well for the past year and a half. Having proven to myself that group e-supervision is a viable form of education, I decided to ask other analysts and psychotherapists whether they would be interested in joining me in this venture. Nine Americans have agreed to participate as e-supervisors. The
Allen M. Siegel, M.D., is a member of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society and is on the faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Rush University School of Medicine; medical director of the Anatolia Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; and editor of a new online journal being developed for the International Council for Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self.
experiment in group e-supervision continues with a broadened base.
The group of thirty that contacted me in 1998 was on the periphery of the Istanbul psychoanalytic community because self-psychology was widely misunderstood in Turkey and viewed with skepticism. However, the group's numbers have grown as the misunderstandings have diminished, and its activities are now recognized by the Turkish psychiatric and analytic communities. Psychiatrists from Ankara, where the medical school is located, have joined our ranks and travel to Istanbul for our regular meetings. Because the number of people from Ankara has grown significantly, people from Istanbul have agreed to travel to Ankara for every third meeting.
The Anatolia Center now includes nearly sixty people. The group decided to temporarily close membership in an effort to preserve group process and cohesion.
The psychiatric members of the Anatolia Center were aware that many of their psychiatric colleagues were unhappy with their work, just as they had been before they found the group. The psychobiology they had been taught—and had practiced as their main therapeutic modality—was not sustaining their colleagues' interest, just as it had not sustained their own. Aware that many of their colleagues were intensely interested in learning about dynamic psychotherapy, some of our members approached pharmaceutical companies and convinced them that a psychodynamic orientation would be a draw for the general psychiatric community.
They were right. In the past year, Arnold Goldberg and I have each presented to conferences of more than 300 Turkish psychiatrists. These meetings were highly successful and have created good working relationships between the sponsoring pharmaceutical companies, who now are eager to incorporate our knowledge into their future programs, and the Anatolia Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
Our center's future is bright. Twenty members of the group are currently in analyses, and many are interested in eventually seeking analytic training at the IPA-sponsored East European Institute. Yavuz and I are investigating the feasibility of such a program. The annual conference of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self will be held in Chicago this year, and twenty-five members of the Anatolia Center plan to attend. We have formed a legal U.S. entity, the American Friends of the Anatolia Center, that will make U.S. corporate and individual donations tax-deductible. Psychoanalysis is alive and flowering in Turkey.