Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie
Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis
by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.
October 30, 1991
Wed. 9am
i just finished some of andrea dworkin's new book mercy. what a warrior, she. i can't read much of it at a time. tears your heart. everything on fire between your legs and hers. the memory of bad, the shame of it. we won't/don't say, but andrea says. she teaches how to breathe yourself back into yourself so you can heal from what's been done to you. the sore. what you didn't know how to stop. you let it set there without knowing what to do next. how to unset what's already set. festering again it starts. you don't know how to stop it. you never learned. it happens over and over in different places in different ways. abuse lives inside aliases and people hide in names you wouldn't imagine ...
therapists sit in a room listen passively to words delivered up to them by experts, but not like babies birthing worlds into fresh skins. words spoken in air of change coming ... exciting new concepts .... maybe the therapists go away from these lectures as sad and as confused as i do. I don't know/understand their language is silence, their speak is not mine.
why did this organization invite a writer to join its club if the powers that be don't want her to speak, to question? one writer and ninety-nine therapists on the wall. i'm outside looking into a place where people speak in tongues. name deleted and name deleted are mean men. they don't listen, are insensitive and controlling, direct discussions and conversations for their own benefits, for the furtherance of their ideas.
mr doctor asks me why i say the two names together, of this month's lecturer and the discussion leader. strange question for someone who has supposedly been listening to me ad nauseum. the two represent father and son and older cousin and brother. rape. as andrea dworkin writes about physical rape i write here of mind rape (i think), mind not physical i don't know, not sure. destroying the child's ego has no possibility of functioning whole. badgered traumatized.
how dare a discussion leader question all those professionals as if he has to teach them something they can't get from their books, other courses, their own practices. he treated them like children. what do i mean them, as if i had not been there hating myself for clumping onto a group that reveres him and classical psychoanalysis. i will be treated as an equal or not at all. i choose to quit in order to keep myself in tact, away from the feeling of rape/encompasses me. i'm swallowed up by theory and form un-letting me create myself. destroyed.
i will not return to the pre-lecture discussion groups. all that went on, with name deleted. i'll not be part of an environment where one person has power given by the group. nor do i like the things he said to me, including: if you hang around the psychoanalytic community you'll realize you can't change it, as if it's already formed and will not re-shape itself into the present, as if it cannot. i don't like the way he responded to questions and comments; his insensitivity toward name deleted and his attempts to cut him off in key places. i think he needs to be the dominant male and didn't like the competition. work in this group does not reflect the magic i often feel in the analytic setting. how naive i was to think it would, which is exactly what i thought.
mr doctor asks me why the two statements - i hate it and i have to leave - come together. i don't know what else to do, mr. doctor. dworkin reinforces my feelings that i shouldn't continue in a situation that is not worth my time personally or professionally. hello, esther, are you there? did you need andrea to tell you that? you're not validated, nor is individuality. only that man's ego does that man validate. i can't keep myself in this environment, maybe there can be an alternative discussion group, one where people bring up dissenting opinions without feeling chopped to pieces.
i didn't think about political correctness around psychoanalysis. a sure slip of some sort so yesterday i call and leave a message for name deleted to talk about the program. she just called back, is going to san francisco for an analytic training weekend. is that why he wanted to change my appointment for next friday? is he going too? enough writing here. i have to get to the library and my body needs a walk...
why didn't he step back? he doesn't have the strength of his convictions. he is the one who has said all along we should not be in the same place at the same time. it seems to me the learning space is most crucial. i can't figure these things out with him in here and out there. why did he choose to teach in the first year intensive when he knew i had already signed up to be in it and was accepted? i don't undertand. where are his principles? why did he choose to teach in the program and, then once he got there, act as if he didn't know me. this is not kosher. he's undermining me. what a mind fucker. go for a walk, esther.
copyright2005Esther Altshul Helfgott
This page was last updated on: July 6, 2005
