Garrick Duckler is a third-year candidate at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, who received his MFT from the Wright Institute and his Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Chicago. Drawing upon his experience as both a college instructor and mental health clinician, Duckler has written, illustrated and narrated a unique set of short films (hand-drawn animation and mixed media) that present various psychological dilemmas for discussion groups and classrooms. I conducted this interview because his grant proposal to support this project impressed the American Psychoanalytic Foundation as the kind of innovation we wish to encourage.
LRB: When did you first get the idea for your project “Presenting Problems”? What was the turning point or moment when you felt you were on to something?
GD: I didn't make these films with the explicit purpose of using them in discussion groups. At least initially, they were ways for me to portray certain types of psychological struggles that didn't fit neatly into a category of anxiety, depression, or the like. I brought them to a former professor of mine whom I had always felt a deep bond with, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. I wanted to show her how I was thinking both about my own analysis and the clinical dilemmas I was faced with as a relatively new clinician. I knew as an innovator she would perhaps appreciate the novelty of form, but I had no idea her response would be so ebullient. She then encouraged me to begin to think of making more with the idea, as there would be more and more “presenting problems” since film and new media were ways of keeping alive ideas and therapeutic dilemmas that, she felt, would engage a broad array of thinkers, therapists, philosophers and teachers.
LRB: When you started on “Presenting Problems,” did you have any thoughts about the economics of putting a video together? Did you consciously think about seeking out grants? When did that occur?
GD: No, I didn't have much of a sense of how to fund, distribute, market or produce a video. It was not my strength. Elisabeth was very good, as she put it, at wearing various hats. She ran a production company called Caversham Productions, which now sadly is no more because of her death. The films had limited distribution through Caversham, but in various ways, I am learning that side of this venture along the way. The films have appeared in many festivals and have won several awards, but there hasn't been any outright marketing plan of action, which would probably be of enormous benefit, but writing, drawing, doing voice over and all the editing and shooting are a fair amount of work (on top of an analytic practice). I wasn't aware of funding until I heard the APsaA foundation was looking for new ways to get psychoanalysis out to the public. I thought analytically minded films by an analyst who has taught classes and has a background in literature had a fair chance at helping in that regard.
LRB: Your proposal talks about finding a new way of promoting psychoanalysis. What is your biggest expense in doing this?
GD: I'm uncomfortable with the idea of “promoting psychoanalysis” as if psychoanalysis is something one could (or should) believe in, like “promoting democracy.” It sounds like a good idea, of course, but can lend itself to misuse and do a disservice to the sophistication of what so many of the thinkers have worked so hard to preserve. If I'm doing any promoting, it is that psychic life (and the pursuit of what is considered therapeutic) is far more complex and layered than most people consider, and that psychoanalysis provides some important and interesting ways to capture that complexity. The biggest expense by far is time. Time not only in making the films but also in dissuading myself this is a pointless endeavor in which I'll just wind up illustrating psychoanalytic concepts in some banal way that will defeat the whole tension between knowing and not knowing.
LRB: You talk about your relationship to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. How did you meet her? You sound like a “go-getter.” Do you think more could be done within the psychoanalytic community to mentor people with good ideas? If so what? Does creativity get started on its own?
GD: The idea that I'm a go-getter makes me laugh. Of course, as an analyst, I am always curious about what we become in the eyes of others, so I will let that marinate. Although for anyone who knows me very well, that term would not be very high on the list of descriptors. I met Elisabeth at Wesleyan when she taught her yearlong Freud class.
Linda R. Benson, M.A., has served on the board of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation for four years. She is an independent writer who specializes in health and medical topics, and teaches at Wayne State University.
It changed my life. I have no doubt I would not be talking with you today if I had not taken that class from that particular person. I was very, very lucky to be in that class. Later in life, I did not seek her as a mentor I sought her as a thinker whose ideas and responses offered something no one else did. That I would even be thought of by her as a mentee still blows my mind. Perhaps that's how she felt about Hannah Arendt, who was her mentor, but whatever the case, it still fills my heart with a bizarre sense of gratitude and disbelief that I was ever that close to her I sought her reaction and wound up with her companionship. Again, incredibly fortunate.
LRB: Estimate how many organizations or audiences you have had contact with in showing this video.
GD: I have shown the films to probably 15 to 17 different audiences, ranging in numbers from 20 to over 200. The responses are my favorite part, of course, since that is the whole point. The films are, on some level, entertaining to see on your own but, in some ways, you would be missing out on what is importantly a collective experience. Once one person raises a question, an idea or association, there is another and another The films I think appear simple but they are rather dense and even though they're short, the discussions tend to be long.
Analysts or analytically minded people are my favorite viewers because they tend to feel comfortable associating—to their patients, to their own clinical struggles. There have been many analysts who've used the films in classes they've taught so that's always intriguing. And many of whom want to now make their own films, which I think is a tremendous idea and I would love to help people develop their own presenting problems, since in each of us there is such a distinctive meeting place between our own histories, personalities and conflicts and those in the patients we treat. It has been an absolute honor to hear from so many different people. Their responses are truly the reward that will help me to continue developing new forms to find ways of talking about all those things in us that don't have names.