1999June2

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Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie

Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis

by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.

June 2, 1999 - The Wolf-Man and Me

I've been reading about the Wolf-Man and have been distraught for days. What a stunning job Karin Obholzer did in her interviews with him. No wonder Muriel Gardiner did not want Sergei to talk with journalists, especially one as competent as Obholzer. Her late-1970s taped conversations with him alter the picture of the Wolf-Man's case as a successful one. The story scares me. To think that he lived his whole life in the context of the psychoanalytic process and never became well. He was sick and sick and sick; he remained nervous and sickly until his death. I blame the analysts. They wouldn't leave him alone, kept him a professional patient throughout his sad life.

At first, I was excited when reading the interviews, felt I could grab hold of psychoanalysis again, use it for my purposes rather than the analysts', and oh, how I continue to detest the analysts. But, then, I lost hold and felt I had to go back to him, if only to see who I used to be in that room.

I am writing Diary of an Analysis again, and it is in diary-form after all. Last week it was becoming a novel. I thought I could be more honest writing in fiction than in non-fiction, I could tell more of the truth that way; but since reading Obholzer's conversations with the Wolf-Man, I am back to thinking I can tell the truth through non-fiction even if I must change the names of people and places.

Abe says I cut down my options when I say I can never go back to him, cut off opportunities for understanding what psychoanalysis has been to me, I set rules for myself, tell me how I am supposed to behave, as if I were a child and the parent in me must proscribe [And don't I have a lovely husband, still; but as a traditional medical doctor, he did support my staying with it every step of the way, not the best thing for a marriage. I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to sit in a room with a woman he felt madly in love with. I guess he's a better man than I am].

The Wolf-Man: Sixty Years Later: Conversations with Freud's Patient by Karin Obholzer,. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie - Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis

Karin Obholzer

Muriel Gardiner; as Lillian Hellman's model for Julia

Wolf-Man

This page was last updated on: July 20, 2005



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


		June 2, 1999 - The Wolf-Man and Me

	I've been reading about the Wolf-Man and have been distraught for days. What a stunning job Karin Obholzer did in her interviews with him. No wonder Muriel Gardiner did not want Sergei to talk with journalists, especially one as competent as Obholzer. Her late-1970s taped conversations with him alter the picture of the Wolf-Man's case as a successful one. The story scares me. To think that he lived his whole life in the context of the psychoanalytic process and never became well. He was sick and sick and sick; he remained nervous and sickly until his death. I blame the analysts. They wouldn't leave him alone, kept him a professional patient throughout his sad life. At first, I was excited when reading the interviews, felt I could grab hold of psychoanalysis again, use it for my purposes rather than the analysts', and oh, how I continue to detest the analysts. But, then, I lost hold and felt I had to go back to him, if only to see who I used to be in that room. I am writing Diary of an Analysis again, and it is in diary-form after all. Last week it was becoming a novel. I thought I could be more honest writing in fiction than in non-fiction, I could tell more of the truth that way; but since reading Obholzer's conversations with the Wolf-Man, I am back to thinking I can tell the truth through non-fiction even if I must change the names of people and places. Abe says I cut down my options when I say I can never go back to him, cut off opportunities for understanding what psychoanalysis has been to me, I set rules for myself, tell me how I am supposed to behave, as if I were a child and the parent in me must proscribe [And don't I have a lovely husband, still; but as a traditional medical doctor, he did support my staying with it every step of the way, not the best thing for a marriage. I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to sit in a room with a woman he felt madly in love with. I guess he's a better man than I am]. The Wolf-Man: Sixty Years Later: Conversations with Freud's Patient by Karin Obholzer,. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. copyright2005Esther Altshul Helfgott Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie - Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis All Rights Reserved Karin Obholzer Muriel Gardiner; as Lillian Hellman's model for Julia Wolf-Man

			This page was last updated on: July 20, 2005