Retirement Redux

I always had mixed feelings about retiring, but after fifty years in the field, I slowly began winding down my practice. At age eighty, I felt fine but, I wondered, for how long. Thinking I'd not be as energetic or sharp or up to snuff eventually, I preferred leaving the party before it left me. Also, there were things I wanted to do.

After that birthday, I stopped accepting new patients and began the process of wrapping up my work with people who were well on their way to achieving their goals. Having gained new ways of experiencing their worlds, one by one, they approached that light at the end of our tunnel. They were equipped to move on, seeing themselves and their worlds with benevolent curiosity. Benevolent curiosity, Ella Sharp's phrase, is a treasure that served us well, so over the following four years, we said our farewells. Closing the door for the last time was bittersweet. Goodbye has never been easy for me, but mourning is a way of life for analysts and we manage it well. I remember feeling lost for a while once I gave away the couch, sold the office, donated some books, and prepared for the next chapter.

Traveling, relaxing, visiting old friends here and abroad, reading novels, visiting museums, theatre, and goofing off in general sounded appealing! Ah, the best laid plans …

Suddenly there was Covid! So just a few months after I closed my thick, wooden, sound-proof office door, I realized my plans would have to wait. Unraveling became tiresome. And despite what I had imagined, the energy did not dissipate. Reading Dickens and Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf and even an old favorite, My Friend Flicka, interspersed with crossword puzzles and Netflix kept me busy but, after a while, not quite enough. Psychoanalytic thinking, once it takes hold, does not let go. In fact it persisted and overpowered other pursuits. I spent more time on PEP Web than ever before.

After I closed my office, I continued to see my three supervisees by phone and Zoom. I had always done long-distance consultation, and either because of the growing popularity of Zoom or something more serendipitous, five more clinicians reached out and suddenly there were eight. I was busier than I had ever dreamt of being. From beginners to advanced, from full fee to no fee, and from my city to Australia, I felt fully engaged again. I wanted to give back all that I had learned and was still learning. So, the very same Covid that continues to curtail my travel plans has its silver lining.

Supervising or consulting is a huge challenge. Neophytes, graduates, and seasoned analysts require a range of skills. As is usually the case, the least experienced presented the most complex patients—the action-prone people who needed to learn that words are way less dangerous and far more satisfying. How to get that message across is always challenging. Some undergraduates were just discovering, in their own personal analyses, what distinguishes psychoanalytic work from other forms of therapy. And several of the seasoned analysts were in or had recently embarked on a second or third personal analysis. It reminds me of the song, “The Second Time Around.” Having had the experience of three analyses myself, beginning when I was 18, I was well aware that growth continues. I see our work as a series of voyages because, as one grows older, there are new continents to explore.

I must mention the kindheartedness of colleagues. There were moments while supervising others that I felt stumped. Glen Gabbard and Richard Almond each gave me support and advice when I needed it, and their generosity will never be forgotten. Wisdom grows as one ages, and it is a real pleasure to receive it in unique ways.

By unique I mean free from early constraints. At the beginning of my long career, I adhered to the classical tradition of my institute in the late 1970s and early '80s. My institute, the Contemporary Freudian Society, formerly the New York Freudian Society, was then pre-Klein, pre-Kohut, pre-Bion. It was Freudian—or at least Freudian as presented by the orthodox. This Freud felt dogmatic and strict, unlike the real Freud I later discovered. The Freud who walked in the park with a patient or offered food was a far more human Freud than one presented by Eitingon and his pals. The original followers and their students turned his recommendations into rules.

In my training days, analysts tried to be invisible: blank screens who showed nothing that might distract the patient from developing a transference neurosis. I remember one teacher advising our class that artwork was verboten lest the patient see the analyst's taste. Can you imagine working day after day, hour after hour surrounded by blank walls? Thankfully, no one I knew paid attention to that advice.

We were taught that silence and occasional interpretation were all that was expected. Nothing more. It was only after graduation that Kohut, Mitchell, Ferenczi,

Bromberg, and a whole host of writers and theorists broadened my world. Suddenly technicolor and stereo were introduced.

Martin Bergmann's post-graduate seminars were breaths of fresh air. Bergmann was open-minded and evolved with the times. While he was a classical thinker, he opened windows for his students by telling us that everything we read had value, and we read a lot together. Another impressive teacher, Gertrude Blank, taught a five-year advanced seminar on ego-building technique for the borderline-less-structured patients, as she called them.

Warren Poland's writing on witnessing was powerful and freeing. He presented what I experienced as a new slant on our work, a slant that I believe should have been there from the beginning, which blended with Ella Sharpe's benevolent curiosity—my North Star. My personal take is that the dyad develops a partnership on the sometimes scary but always fascinating journey inside.

As with many analysts, after graduation my palette became more sophisticated and my mind primed for new ideas. Norman Doidge's work on the plasticity of the brain, Jaak Panksepp's “affective neuroscience,” and Mark Solms's neuropsychoanalysis deepened my understanding of the mind. Ed Tronick turned me on to the field of epigenetics. Rona Knight introduced a more modern theory of nonlinear dynamic systems and suggested a revised understanding of developmental phases and stages. Just as I was closing shop and ending my work with patients, new and exciting ideas offered themselves and begged digesting.

Around this time, my book Deepening the Treatment was translated into Mandarin and published in China. A Chinese institute hired me to teach forty lectures a year. Teaching for my institute and for China, along with supervising, keeps me busy these days. Each week, I send my lectures to a translator. I speak in English and Daisy translates. Many of the forty students understand English, and they enjoy my tone of voice. Others rely on Daisy. We have managed to build a cohesive group despite the language barrier and the Zoom platform. I invariably look forward to our Saturday night (their Sunday morning) two-hour sessions. Saturday night is no longer the loneliest night of the week, if you remember the old Frank Sinatra song.

So what happened to retirement? Seeing patients is something I miss, but it feels like I did the right thing. Closing the practice was a gradual process—a tapering off of sorts. When my last analytic patient reached the date we had set nine months earlier, I closed my door for the last time.

My attention and allegiance have shifted to learners—and as they learn, so do I. This chapter of my life is fulfilling, and it underscores how enriching this profession is.

I end with my favorite quote:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

Jane S. Hall, CSW, FIPA, is past president of the Contemporary Freudian Society; past board member of IPA and APsaA; a national and international lecturer, teacher, and consultant; and author of Roadblocks on the Journey of Psychotherapy and Deepening the Treatment .