Once upon a very, very long time in human history, the storyteller was “the keeper of the keys” in terms of human culture and experience. We have gradually departed from those roots and in so doing have certainly lost our “mind” and perhaps our soul as well.
My first experience in the art of the master storyteller was when I had the good fortune to have William Faulkner as a writer-in-residence during my years at the University of Virginia. The first book we were assigned was The Sound and the Fury. The first 90 pages of this remarkable book consist of what is quite literally free association in the mind of a retarded young man. I struggled with reading and re-reading it, knowing I was going to be tested on it. However, after discussing it with Faulkner, I finally got the idea. I re-read it once again and just let the affect and the wonderful words flow over me like a warm wave, and I understood.
A few years later when I started my psychiatric residency at Mass Mental Health in Boston, we were greeted by a legendary teacher of national fame, Elvin Semrad. On the first day Semrad gathered all 22 of us residents in his office. We had been to our wards and knew that we were going to be taking care of 50 of what were certainly the most disturbed people I had ever seen. Semrad smiled his Buddha-like smile and said, “Well I guess you're all wondering what articles you should be reading to help you in this work. The answer is none. If you want to know what this is all about, go find the sickest person on the ward and sit with him or her for as long as you can stand it.” Semrad went on, “What you have to understand is that what may seem to be bizarre symptoms to you do not seem at all bizarre to them. In fact, they have evolved these symptoms as a way of coping with impossible family situations. These symptoms represent a creative adaptive endeavor. They are a work of art as much as any other work of art. Your job, and your only job, is to appreciate all these wonderful stories you are going to be hearing.” Those words of wisdom have never left me.
At the 2013 National Meeting of our Association we had a double treat that I am sharing with you in this issue of TAP. We had our own Newell Fischer, past president of our Association and a supervising and training analyst at the Center for Psychoanalysis in Philadelphia. Newell has written a marvelous book, entitled Nine Lives, about nine of his psychotherapy patients. Full of compassion, he recounts the stories of his patients and the psychodynamic process that helped to heal them. The book has been very well received by the public, the media, and was certainly well received in his presentation. [See “Nine Lives: A View from Within,” page 3.]
Bob Pyles, M.D., is president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
The second treat was by Stephen Grosz who discussed his book as part of the Presidential Symposium, also telling the stories of his patients. It is entitled The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves. Grosz has been a practicing psychoanalyst for more than 25 years and teaches at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. This is his first book and has received glowing reviews. It is a Sunday Times of London best seller and has been named a 2013 Book of the Year no fewer than 15 times by critics at leading publications, including the New York Times. [See “How We Can Be Possessed by a Story That Cannot Be Told,” page 7.]
Both Fischer's and Grosz's books are marvels of human warmth and clinical intelligence. They are certainly a must read for any psychoanalytic training program as well as for the general public. I invite you to enter their world.