This is an old post from when I was a psychoanalytic student, I've graduated and trained postgrad three years program.

I love psychoanalysis and CBT is okay too, but I love psychoanalysis! Its been two years since I started my training as a student in psychoanalysis. When I tell people I am learning psychoanalysis, it is a spectrum of responses from Freud being out of date/old school to Are you going to psychoanalyze me?!

Psychoanalysis is finding truth in one self, owning the part of the ugly parts and the beautiful parts through the authentic connection with analyst. Conscious part of the mind is only the tip of the iceberg, most of us operate unconsciously, repeating the same relationships, patterns and behaviors over and over again.

Psychotherapist are struggling with the demands of quick fixes from insurances and by people in general. We as a society are conditioned to expect discounted, easy, quick solution to our problems delivered in less than 15 minutes or less. This is why alcohol, drugs, amazon prime, and binge watching Netflix is so popular. So why do deep, hard emotional work when we can live in a shallow meaningless lie?

It was the right fit for me because I was always introspective, the numerologist said “I had the mind deep as the ocean.”

I still remember the first few days of psychoanalysis classes (not really knowing what to expect) with Professor X, her beautiful Marilyn Monroe blonde hair and silk tie in a clean cut perfect white button down. Professor X is a woman in her 80s, she was full of class and beauty even at an old age. It has given me hope that when I’m old, I can still be sexy. What came out of Professor X mouth excited me sexually and on the other gave me so much anxiety sitting on the edge of her couch. I’ve never heard of so much words of penis, anal, sex used repetitively in a sentence in two hours…

Fast forward to present, I feel exhausted and somewhat numb and maybe even confusion, everyday I battle my inadequacy that I’m too young, the resistance of being authentic, and staying open to people’s pain and suffering. There are days when I feel numb because I don’t want to feel too much of people’s pain, its part of the profession of intense vulnerability of allowing oneself to be fully human towards another human. Its almost dangerous. terrifying. and unbearable.

I like to end this post I will regurgitate what my quirky Jewish with the messy hair Professor E said after telling her my struggles to practice psychoanalysis in agencies. “If you love what you do, just keep doing it, ignore everything and everyone else, you know and the patient know the incredible work is being done.”

If you also love deep work, and creative process in therapy, and want to do psychoanalysis twice to four times a week in Upper West Side, reach out to me for a free 15 minutes phone consultation.

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