Ruth Neubauer is a graduate of the Advanced Psychotherapy Training Program at the Washington School of Psychiatry. As a member of their faculty, she teaches basic psychoanalytic concepts to beginning therapists. She is also a graduate of the New Directions Program of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society, which is a program for clinicians interested in both psychoanalysis and writing. She is a licensed clinical social worker in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, with a private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, working with both adults and couples. Neubauer has co-founded “Retirement” or WHAT NEXT™, which are weekend workshops designed for women over 50 working on life transitions. In keeping with her desire to bring basic psychoanalytic concepts to the general public, she has designed a course entitled, Psychoanalytic Ideas for Everyday Living, which she teaches at Politics and Prose, a Washington bookstore.
Neubauer has many other writing and artistic accomplishments. In reading about them, and a number of her poems, it was clear that there is an interweaving between the strands of artistic life, daily experience, and reflective, psychoanalytic-style listening. One of the delights of her poetry is that the interweaving seems so unstrained.
TALK TO ME—TWO POEMS
| Connection | Listen |
| Transcends | Listen carefully |
| Silence | Listen |
| Space | Inside, inside, inside |
| Time | Where the music |
| Distance | Lives |
| Anger | And the harmonies |
| Distraction | Begin |
| Thought | Lost |
| Feelings | So often |
| In the sounds | |
| Once | Of |
| Is | Avoiding |
| forever. | silence. |
—Ruth Neubauer
Sheri A. Hunt, M.D., is a candidate at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in both the adult and child training programs. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes readers' comments and suggestions at .