A Crucial Question at the Right Time

Beginning psychoanalytic training knocked me for a loop. You might not have seen it from the outside. I quickly picked up my supervised cases. I wrote my initial assessments and annual reviews—on time! But none of that helped me shake a sense of fear that I really did not know what I was doing and was pretty sure I was doing it wrong. Buffeted by inner critics, I scurried to try to get it “right.” But I really wasn't sure what “right” was.

And then, halfway through my second year of training, Mia Biran, a senior faculty member at the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute led a writing class for my group. She asked us to write a brief paragraph about a question she posed. The question was something like, “What is going on in the analysis?”

It was such a simple question. What did I think was going on?

In some real way, it was the first time I asked myself that question. A lightbulb turned on. I wrote to figure out what I thought. All these years later, I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but I imagine it was something about love and the lack of it and the deep longing to find it and being really unable to deal with the loss of it and the deep withdrawal from needing someone else. And I had a glimmer of the pain that this patient and I would have to go through if we were going to work it out.

Why was that moment so pivotal in my development as an analyst? Maybe it was something about the teacher and the question and the act of writing?

Mia conveyed an expectation that I had a good mind and, of course, could think for myself. The question was so straight forward and to the point– nothing to hide behind. She used the language of my life—not my professional life which helped me speak from my voice. I was in the process of developing my analytic voice. And, I had been trying to do this from outside in through meeting the expectations of authority, leaving me detached from my own sensibilities.

And finally, that I found the answer in writing seems crucial; I found the privacy to find my own words. This particular question pulled for writing that was akin to journal writing. Journals offer a way to express and sometimes find your thoughts through a sense of safety and lack of judgement. You don't have to do it right. You are just trying to see what you think.

Writing is also a construction. It creates scaffolding to explore difficult inner terrain. It helps me think my thoughts, explore my ideas. Maybe a visual would help to describe how this works. I have an image of something solid being formed from something liquid. The liquid has proto-ideas floating around in an unorganized but potentially creative ferment. These ideas hook together and take shape to make a solid form—a coherent, worded thought. Writing helps. Once an idea is formed, you have a new surface on which to build the next one, and so on. You can end up with some pretty complex ideas.

Of course, writing isn't the only way to think, but it offers several benefits. It is deliberate and purposeful. It is useful in a classroom setting. And, you can share it with your colleagues and teachers, and they can share their perspectives, which give you other seed crystals to create your ideas. The location you start from is integral to thinking—like Mia's good question.

But why was this moment so pivotal in my development? The teacher and the question and the writing. And I was ready.