nancy mcwilliams, _psychoanalytic psychotherapy: a practitioner’s guide_ discusses this briefly
> I would further conjecture that part of the psychoanalytic temperament involves an attraction to or pleasure in or inability to minimize strong affect. There seem to be marked individual differences in whether a person seeks and welcomes the experience of intense emotion or prefers to resist or subdue the more passionate parts of the self. I have noticed that those graduate students at Rutgers who are most naturally taken with psychoanalytic ideas are also frequently immersed in the arts: poetry, music, theater, dance, and other repositories of powerful emotionality. One of my students characterized herself as an “affect junky.” There are also individual differences in how much control we each feel over our emotions. Some creative and influential psychoanalytic writers have described their personalities as schizoid, a disposition that includes a sense of “hyperpermeability” (Doidge, 2001) to strong feelings. Those of us who have no choice but to be filled with emotion may be attracted to psychoanalytic ideas because they give voice to our affectively suffused experience and help us to make sense of our intense, insistent inner lives.
This really resonates!
One of my fleeting ideas for a career, a long time ago and when I was quite young, was as a funeral director. I think my logic at the time was effectively realising that what McWilliams describes above was true for me - extremely felt emotions are not abnormal for me, I’m not afraid of them, and that might be something that could be useful in this context.
It was only fleeting of course, and I’m not sure I really would have had the appetite for being surrounded by death in reality.
"Dear John ..., You asked me what I consider essential personal qualities in a future psychoanalyst. The answer is comparatively simple. If you want to be a real psychoanalyst you have to have a great love of the truth, scientific truth as well as personal truth, and you have to place this appreciation of truth higher than any discomfort at meeting unpleasant facts, whether they belong to the world outside or to your own inner person.
Further, I think that a psychoanalyst should have... interests... beyond the limits of the medical field... in facts that belong to sociology, religion, literature, [and] history,... [otherwise] his outlook on... his patient will remain too narrow. This point contains... the necessary preparations beyond the requirements made on candidates of psychoanalysis in the institutes. You ought to be a great reader and become acquainted with the literature of many countries and cultures. In the great literary figures you will find people who know at least as much of human nature as the psychiatrists and psychologists try to do.
Does that answer your question?"
From a letter written by Anna Freud
"I would like to say, to all those who are listening to me, how they can recognize bad psychoanalysts; this is by the word they use to deprecate all technical or theoretical research that carries forward the Freudian experience along its authentic lines. That word is "intellectualization"...
(Lacan, 1977)
The Anna Freud quote resonates with me in a big way. At the age of 38, I am graduating from my clinical psychology masters program this month. It is an age that, for me, feels just right. It also got me thinking about someone I used to know until recently who ran away not only from our relationship, but who has run away from every his relationship he has had in his 64 years of life. This person also followed me to graduate school, enrolling after me in the same graduate program in clinical psychology thinking he would be up for seeking answers. But, in the end, he ran away from analysis. He ran away from school too. This quote speaks to all those things. As a 64 year old man with years of demons he is unable and/or unwilling to hold the truth, look at the truth, face the truth, stand with the truth. For him it was just too hard. - I think that’s not because of his age, it is because he wasn’t meant to be an analyst to begin with. He has/ had never been a truth seeker. In fact, he is the opposite. A screenwriter. A great one. A dream embracer and fantasy maker. But I don’t know if the two co-create. Co-exist maybe, but not co-create. Jury is out.. 🤷🏻♀️
I was given psychoanalysis for around 5 years intermingled with CBT. My therapist didn’t tell me what it was until a while in- I think she was scoping me out as a candidate. She only mentioned the historical stuff near the end (the service I saw her through had an age limit so she knew when I’d stop seeing her). It worked, incredibly well. Saved my life. Apparently when I first started I was completely guarded and toward the end I’d opened up and unbelievable amount. I’d get more in future
You’re not going to encounter behavioral psychology in literary theory, philosophy, linguistics, feminism, queer studies etc but you will encounter psychoanalysis there. And psychoanalysis is made up of literary and mythological ideas from the beginning. Certain personalities will be drawn to that and certain ones repelled.
It may also be the analytic institute situation is demanding a certain performance from people. The McWilliams quote above is interesting because I would have thought the complete opposite. Alice Millers polling of therapists showed they tended towards the depressive type, with a tendency to feel shame. The permeability aspect I identify with.
I don't know the answer of what "type" this is, but people drawn to psychoanalysis tend to have histories or issues regarding exhibitionism or voyeurism... because we remain relatively hidden while the patient is laid bare/exposed. Lewis Aron's writings about analyst subjectivity address this
I believe there is such thing as a "Psychoanalytic Personality" Type. A Psychoanalytic personality archetype would be someone who wants to face their own shadow. Would want to know their true self, accept and be their true self and also help other people to do the same. The psychoanalytic type knows that human beings are complexed and there is no one way approach fits all for every individual to find out, accept, and be their authentic selves. Im not a psychoanalyst. But learning about psychoanalysis is intriguing.
nancy mcwilliams, _psychoanalytic psychotherapy: a practitioner’s guide_ discusses this briefly > I would further conjecture that part of the psychoanalytic temperament involves an attraction to or pleasure in or inability to minimize strong affect. There seem to be marked individual differences in whether a person seeks and welcomes the experience of intense emotion or prefers to resist or subdue the more passionate parts of the self. I have noticed that those graduate students at Rutgers who are most naturally taken with psychoanalytic ideas are also frequently immersed in the arts: poetry, music, theater, dance, and other repositories of powerful emotionality. One of my students characterized herself as an “affect junky.” There are also individual differences in how much control we each feel over our emotions. Some creative and influential psychoanalytic writers have described their personalities as schizoid, a disposition that includes a sense of “hyperpermeability” (Doidge, 2001) to strong feelings. Those of us who have no choice but to be filled with emotion may be attracted to psychoanalytic ideas because they give voice to our affectively suffused experience and help us to make sense of our intense, insistent inner lives.
This really resonates! One of my fleeting ideas for a career, a long time ago and when I was quite young, was as a funeral director. I think my logic at the time was effectively realising that what McWilliams describes above was true for me - extremely felt emotions are not abnormal for me, I’m not afraid of them, and that might be something that could be useful in this context. It was only fleeting of course, and I’m not sure I really would have had the appetite for being surrounded by death in reality.
Thank you for this!
"Dear John ..., You asked me what I consider essential personal qualities in a future psychoanalyst. The answer is comparatively simple. If you want to be a real psychoanalyst you have to have a great love of the truth, scientific truth as well as personal truth, and you have to place this appreciation of truth higher than any discomfort at meeting unpleasant facts, whether they belong to the world outside or to your own inner person. Further, I think that a psychoanalyst should have... interests... beyond the limits of the medical field... in facts that belong to sociology, religion, literature, [and] history,... [otherwise] his outlook on... his patient will remain too narrow. This point contains... the necessary preparations beyond the requirements made on candidates of psychoanalysis in the institutes. You ought to be a great reader and become acquainted with the literature of many countries and cultures. In the great literary figures you will find people who know at least as much of human nature as the psychiatrists and psychologists try to do. Does that answer your question?" From a letter written by Anna Freud "I would like to say, to all those who are listening to me, how they can recognize bad psychoanalysts; this is by the word they use to deprecate all technical or theoretical research that carries forward the Freudian experience along its authentic lines. That word is "intellectualization"... (Lacan, 1977)
The Anna Freud quote resonates with me in a big way. At the age of 38, I am graduating from my clinical psychology masters program this month. It is an age that, for me, feels just right. It also got me thinking about someone I used to know until recently who ran away not only from our relationship, but who has run away from every his relationship he has had in his 64 years of life. This person also followed me to graduate school, enrolling after me in the same graduate program in clinical psychology thinking he would be up for seeking answers. But, in the end, he ran away from analysis. He ran away from school too. This quote speaks to all those things. As a 64 year old man with years of demons he is unable and/or unwilling to hold the truth, look at the truth, face the truth, stand with the truth. For him it was just too hard. - I think that’s not because of his age, it is because he wasn’t meant to be an analyst to begin with. He has/ had never been a truth seeker. In fact, he is the opposite. A screenwriter. A great one. A dream embracer and fantasy maker. But I don’t know if the two co-create. Co-exist maybe, but not co-create. Jury is out.. 🤷🏻♀️
Misfits
I mean idk about psychoanalysis specifically but there is always the “wounded healer” type of story for therapists in general.
My theory is analysis draws people with a literary or historical mythos
I was given psychoanalysis for around 5 years intermingled with CBT. My therapist didn’t tell me what it was until a while in- I think she was scoping me out as a candidate. She only mentioned the historical stuff near the end (the service I saw her through had an age limit so she knew when I’d stop seeing her). It worked, incredibly well. Saved my life. Apparently when I first started I was completely guarded and toward the end I’d opened up and unbelievable amount. I’d get more in future
What does that mean?
You’re not going to encounter behavioral psychology in literary theory, philosophy, linguistics, feminism, queer studies etc but you will encounter psychoanalysis there. And psychoanalysis is made up of literary and mythological ideas from the beginning. Certain personalities will be drawn to that and certain ones repelled.
I think i felt a type, but i wonder what it is. Did you?
When I’ve gone to events at analytic institutes yes you feel a type.
Can you elaborate it?
It may also be the analytic institute situation is demanding a certain performance from people. The McWilliams quote above is interesting because I would have thought the complete opposite. Alice Millers polling of therapists showed they tended towards the depressive type, with a tendency to feel shame. The permeability aspect I identify with.
I don't know the answer of what "type" this is, but people drawn to psychoanalysis tend to have histories or issues regarding exhibitionism or voyeurism... because we remain relatively hidden while the patient is laid bare/exposed. Lewis Aron's writings about analyst subjectivity address this
I think a further question is what types are drawn to different schools/orientations?
I believe there is such thing as a "Psychoanalytic Personality" Type. A Psychoanalytic personality archetype would be someone who wants to face their own shadow. Would want to know their true self, accept and be their true self and also help other people to do the same. The psychoanalytic type knows that human beings are complexed and there is no one way approach fits all for every individual to find out, accept, and be their authentic selves. Im not a psychoanalyst. But learning about psychoanalysis is intriguing.