More items from the American Psychoanalytic meeting in NY this week:
1. Confidence that antidepressants will work improves their effectiveness by around 40%. I don't know what that means, and I tend to doubt it - but that's the data. Interesting. There are still many analysts who feel that antidepressants interfere with treatment. They could be right.
2. Most psychoanalysts practice very little analysis. It's the nature of the modern world. Analysts regret it, but they feel that their rigorous and lengthy training helps them in whatever they do.
3. I always knew this, but analysts tend to be stiff, unapproachable, stern, and unfriendly people. The presentations are humorless, cold, unrelaxed, and always delivered in a wierd - can I say "hypnotic? - monotone. Very strange, given their profession, in which they are very kind and caring. And yet an analytic meeting is the coldest, most unfriendly sort of "convention" you could ever find. Nobody chats, nobody hoists a few beers at the bar - unless they know eachother already. They are totally isolated at the meeting, which is not fun at all. Even when you sit next to them, they don't acknowledge your existence. It's like an Episcopal Church. A bit schizoid. When you smile at someone and say "hi," you feel like you are intruding. I am not like that, at least since my second analysis. Will ask Nathan to try to explain this unpleasant phenomenon.
4. In semi-contradiction to the above, overheard at the Waldorf lobby bar between a somber but cute youngish analyst gal and a gal friend at 2 pm: "I need a drink or two. And then, let's go do some shopping or something. I need a break." Do not ask me what I was doing at the bar.
5. I always find it amusing that Freud never had a psychoanalysis. He said he did self-analysis, which I am certain that he did. Like any explorer, he opened many doors, and was wrong about some small things, but right about a few very big things. A hero, for certain.
6. "Self-psychology" and object relations theorizing: Just say the term "projected self-object" and I am asleep. Same goes for the words "Melanie Klein." I am outta there. This stuff is gobbledy-gook to me, and I ain't dumb. If you can't explain it to me in the King's English, forget it. No sale. Back to Charles Brenner.
