My Psychoanalytic Journey

I entered therapy to stop ruminating. I could not stop thinking about my ex-boss, my ex-girlfriend, and my father. No matter where I was, no matter what I was doing, I couldn’t go more than a minute or two without remembering how one of them had wronged me.  Yes, I told my therapist, Laura, they had wronged me. I wasn’t saying I was perfect, but their treatment of me had been premeditated, callous, injurious. My ex-girlfriend, for example, had lied to me again and again, assuring me that she loved me and would never again see that other man. And of course, I later found out, she never stopped seeing him. Laura seemed genuinely interested in my story, so I kept sharing it, one grisly episode after another. She would ask what feelings accompanied my ruminations, and my answer every time was anger. Pure, visceral anger. I felt so much anger that I would often fantasize about enacting revenge, imagine sending my ex-girlfriend a mean text message or embarrassing my ex-boss in front of h...

Several years ago, I briefly became obsessed with self-help books. I’d just gone through a bad breakup, the type of breakup that feels like your soul has been ripped out. Only imagine your soul being long and tightly coiled like your intestines, and imagine the universe ripping it out little by little. The breakup had been bad enough, but now my ex wanted me back. I knew that we shouldn’t be together. I also sensed that resistance would be futile.  And so out of desperation, I started reading self-help books, and before long I had become convinced that she was “a borderline,” maybe “a narcissist,” that she had ensnared me through her “love bombing,” that I had become “trauma-bonded.” These books helped me feel like I was regaining power, and I managed to stay away from her.  Until, inevitably, I didn’t. We resumed dating and enjoyed six beautiful weeks together, and then, true to our pattern, things got progressively awful, and we finally broke up again. I have no doubt that ...

I’m lying on Laura’s couch, wishing I’d remembered a dream from the previous night. It’s one of those days that I’m not sure what to talk about. “I keep thinking about my old boss,” I finally begin, “the one from the elementary school. Just the same old thoughts, the same old mental loop. I keep fantasizing about sending him this mean email.” “What does your email say?” The thought of answering embarrasses me, a sign that I need to answer. “I tell him that he’s not qualified to run a school. I tell him that he’s a giant asshole.” Laura says nothing. “And of course I would never send that email. And of course I know he’s not an asshole. He’s a person just like me. He’s a person with his own story and his own pain. Again, the same endless loop — remembering what happened, getting pissed off, reminding myself that he’s not the monster I sometimes make him out to be.” “What gets missed in all this,” Laura says, “is your experience.” This is one of those lightbulb moments. She’s said these ...

Introduction An affect is an innate, automatic, physiological response to a stimulus. The response involves a change in the rate of neural firing, and this in turn results in changes in one’s facial muscles, voice, and autonomic nervous system. The response is experienced as rewarding, punishing, or neutral, and consequently, it motivates us to act in a certain way. The stimulus can be intrapsychic or extrapsychic, and the stimulus can enter into our conscious awareness or stay out of our conscious awareness.  A feeling is our awareness of a specific affect. An emotion is our awareness of a specific affect combined with our memory of other times we had that affect.  Affects serve the vital function of enhancing our survival and well being. They primarily do this by communicating information (to ourselves and others) and by moving us to action.   Affects Tomkins listed affects by their weak and strong forms.He considered the first six affects to be primary affects and the ...

Dynamic Systems Theory Dynamic Systems Theory Demos advocates a dynamic systems view of personality. Dynamic systems theory states that the behavior and development of living organisms is determined by both endogenous and exogenous principles. Endogenous Principles. As stated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, living organisms are born with “highly complex organization” as well as an endogenous impetus governing “initiation or action and function.” One corroboration for this claim came several years ago when embryologists studied the roundworm, an incredibly simple organism with just 959 cells. Although each embryonic roundworm developed into a similarly structured adi;t roundworm, “no set of cells followed the same pattern” of development; rather, there “seemed to be an infinite number of routes taken, yet the end product was always the same.” Exogenous Principles. Had our evolutionary history been different, we might have not developed into bipedal walkers. When environmental influences (or...

Anger I knew I’d been angry with my dad for the past several years, but it was only after I started reading through some old journal entries that I realized that this anger had been with me for most of my adult life. These old entries felt as though they could have been written last week. I like to think that I’m ever changing, ever evolving, but these writings paint the picture of someone stuck in an endless loop. In one passage after another, I express rage that he’s always trying to change me, that he refuses to accept me for who I am. I write that I hate him and that I’m lying when I say at the end of our phone conversations that I love him. In an entry from almost twenty years ago I recount how he told me I was wasting potential at my job. I proceed to explain in detail why he’s wrong, giving reason after reason why I’m working exactly the right job for that time in my life. I admit to myself how much his “stupid words” irritate me and not because I think they’re true but because ...

Chapter 1: Potential Space Why does insight not always lead to behavioral change? Freud answered this question by positing the idea of “working through,” the idea that repeating insights eventually leads to change (“Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through,” 1914). Freud and later analysts added that the insight must often be experienced “at a deeply affective level.” Since Freud, different analytic schools have provided different answers to the question. Ego psychologists: change is made possible by interpretations focusing on libidinal wishes and defense mechanisms. Kleinians: change comes by interpreting “early, primitive, especially aggressively dominated fantasies.” Kohut: change comes through the creation of a new object relationship. Winnicott: change comes through the analyst’s holding function when the patient has regressed to dependence. Relational analysts: change comes when attention is brought to the analytic relationship. Certain interpersonal therapists: change comes ...