Those who remember Robert Lindner's 1954 best selling “book of thirty-three psychoanalytical tales,” The Fifty Minute Hour, or Lucy Freeman's 1969 Fight Against Fears, or Karl Menninger's 1963 work The Vital Balance, know that a psychoanalyst or analysand can inform and enliven the general public about psychoanalytic ideas. Such significant influences in my early life were pivotal in my becoming an analyst. They also kindled my enthusiasm and love for psychoanalysis and inspired me to bring analytic concepts and thinking to others.
Today we are too often told psychoanalysis is dead—to such an extent that I was recently informed by a graduate student in Missouri that “real analysts no longer practice in the U.S.” Yet I have found people of all ages, and in diverse settings, to be interested in and receptive to psychoanalytic ideas. People continue to seek psychoanalytic understanding. The aspects of psychoanalysis that compelled our own attention can still be riveting to people outside our professional worlds; the discovery of the unconscious is never a ho-hum experience.
There is, of course, a significant difference between the practice of psychoanalysis in our offices and the explication and teaching of psychoanalytic ideas for the public and the media. The discipline and the process in each case are quite different, but the knowledge is transferable. In the 1980s, I taught “Dreams and Unconscious Processes” to high-school seniors at Princeton Day School in New Jersey. I used the seminar style I had experienced in my advanced dream seminar in my psychoanalytic training in 1969. My students loved bringing in their dreams (or those of their friends and mothers) and then, as a group, free-associating to them, an approach that came from Geza Roheim. We had a very good time in that class, and the students learned a great deal about themselves and psychoanalytic concepts.
Another challenge outside the office was to provide comments for newspaper reporters who found me by happenstance or word-of-mouth. Communicating psychoanalytic ideas in ordinary language is not easy, but I have had a sense of accomplishment in trying—and in knowing that not just a cognitive-behavioral or solution-focused voice is being heard.
In an effort to adapt to the era of managed medicine, I learned the skills of “coaching.” Coaching has become a defined field of professional assistance. It is goal-oriented and directive, and psychoanalytic experience is in no way expected or requested. However my psychoanalytic background has added inestimable depth and value to the directive activity in coaching. I have also had to integrate traditional psychoanalytic thinking and methodology with the language and culture of the business world.
The skills needed to coach a political candidate, a financial fund owner, a homemaker, a computer specialist, a dentist, and a number of professors and clinicians are deepened by understanding unconscious forces. These motivated individuals' goals have included winning a campaign, finding balance in life, attaining physical fitness, pursuing professional growth, and increasing income. (And now because of coaching some women jet pilots, I restarted my flying lessons.)
It is no surprise that I have felt, and continue to feel, reluctance and resistance in moving beyond my comfort zone. The idea of action and goals without depth and understanding are not just beyond the 50 minute hour Such an idea is beyond common sense, intelligence, and freedom, to me. Teaching and encouraging psychoanalytic interest outside our offices is important in these difficult times.
Judith Logue, Ph.D., practices analysis in Princeton, N.J. She also consults with various media outlets including the National Enquirer and coaches individuals in the professions, business, and academia.