Esther Altshul Helfgott, Dissertation Dream, psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie

Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis

by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.

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December 27, 1991

Dissertation Dream: Irena Klepfisz and I meet Sylvia Plath

Irena Klepfisz and I sit around a table talking. My papers and hers are sprawled in front of us. In the midst of our conversation, her voice becomes stronger, more forceful, more male-like than it was in the beginning of the dream. But care and concern for me and my project also show in her face. She asks: 'Have you finished the part on Sylvia Plath?'

I put my head down on the table and begin mumbling. I know I'm not including Sylvia Plath in my thesis, but Klepfisz's question makes me wonder if I should or if I'm supposed to. This feeling is familiar: I know what I'm doing until someone, who is both male and female, overpowers me. The double whammy mother/father figure Mr. Doctor and I talk about.

Sylvia Plath, more famous for her suicide than for her poems, the prototypical suffering woman poet who stifles her work through silencing the self, but completely. She and Anne Sexton. Those two, damn them. Part of me wants to know them. Be them.

In the dream I can't know them because Irena Klepfisz is there facing me, opposing me via her location in the world, as much as at the table. She represents hope and living, even and especially, in the face of death. No matter how difficult the struggle, the woman writer/Irena goes on. She moves. She acts. She does. With her breath and her words. At the end of our talk, she hands me a packet of her personal papers. She says: "These are for you to use in your work." In real life she told me, "You have plenty to work with what's already out there. I don't want to reveal anything else about my life yet."

Time's up..

This web page was created May 20, 2006

This page was last updated on: May 20, 2006



Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.
				home table of contents


	December 27, 1991 Dissertation Dream: Irena Klepfisz and I meet Sylvia Plath Irena Klepfisz and I sit around a table talking. My papers and hers are sprawled in front of us. In the midst of our conversation, her voice becomes stronger, more forceful, more male-like than it was in the beginning of the dream. But care and concern for me and my project also show in her face. She asks: 'Have you finished the part on Sylvia Plath?' I put my head down on the table and begin mumbling. I know I'm not including Sylvia Plath in my thesis, but Klepfisz's question makes me wonder if I should or if I'm supposed to. This feeling is familiar: I know what I'm doing until someone, who is both male and female, overpowers me. The double whammy mother/father figure Mr. Doctor and I talk about. Sylvia Plath, more famous for her suicide than for her poems, the prototypical suffering woman poet who stifles her work through silencing the self, but completely. She and Anne Sexton. Those two, damn them. Part of me wants to know them. Be them. In the dream I can't know them because Irena Klepfisz is there facing me, opposing me via her location in the world, as much as at the table. She represents hope and living, even and especially, in the face of death. No matter how difficult the struggle, the woman writer/Irena goes on. She moves. She acts. She does. With her breath and her words. At the end of our talk, she hands me a packet of her personal papers. She says: "These are for you to use in your work." In real life she told me, "You have plenty to work with what's already out there. I don't want to reveal anything else about my life yet." Time's up.. This web page was created May 20, 2006

			This page was last updated on: May 20, 2006



		This page was last updated on: May 20, 2006