Thanksgiving
November 24, 2005

On Thanksgiving Day I feel free to let my thoughts take their own course and to think of gratitude. I began thinking of what it is that we do in psychotherapy, particularly with persons so traumatized by their life experiences, their own affects, etc. I am grateful for my psychoanalytic training which included exposure to Freudian, interpersonal and relational perspectives. Over the years, I feel I have developed my own way of working (probably similar to many others although it feels so intimately a part of myself). I remember Richard Lucas, Post-Kleinian psychiatrist in London, telling me of his experience in supervision with Wilfred Bion: the latter encouraging him to be himself in the work, not to be a Bionian, Kleinian, etc. Over time superego restrictions loosen in the service of the process. One can feel more confident while at the same time recognizing the infinity of our not-knowing. One feels more comfortable walking with one’s therapeutic partner in the dark (as St. John of the Cross, Spanish mystic and poet of compassion, pointed out: it is only in the darkness that one securely finds one’s way, one feels the ground beneath one's feet). I can feel good when the process takes over both partners in the dyad (in the service of the growth of each), allowing for greater trust and awareness of the oneness and potential goodness of human existence (working through the deep fears and hatreds to the substratum of recognition of mutual humanity).

This past week, in anticipation of a break in the therapy sessions (I am traveling to Spain to meet Dr.Manuel González de Chávez in Madrid), a person I am seeing in twice weekly psychotherapy used a metaphor of an image from a current movie: she felt like a pot of petunias hurling towards the ground in anticipation of crashing. This is a person who has felt like an outsider most of her life. When I offered an additional session prior to the break, she quickly responded, “You caught the flower pot in mid-air,” to which I quickly responded, “The petunias are too precious to break.” We both looked deeply at each other. Human recognition, human connection. I feel grateful to her. Human life, as well as health, thrives in dialogue. Recognition of what is real in each other allows for authentic human connection: an antidote to the awful loneliness of much of human life.

Brian Koehler