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I am back home in Boston. A few final thoughts from the analytic meetings:
1. It makes more sense to speak about "engagement" in treatment than to speak about "treatment alliance" or "therapeutic alliance."
2. A capacity for self-analysis is one good indicator for the end of an analysis.
3. Is psychoanalytic theory, especially its meta-theory, little more than an intellectual crutch for the doctor?
4. Not news, but analysts are prone to all of the obnoxious and nutty human traits that everyone else is.
5. Classical psychoanalysis is for people with mainly neurotic conflicts and personality issues in the neurotic zone, but many are treating less-well put-together people with all sorts of non-classical analysis these days. I always find that interesting, but I am not sure it makes sense. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I have an analytic tool-kit and a psychotherapy tool-kit, and they are different.
6. How come people who live a short train-ride into the city rarely do anything, but out-of-towners come in and catch a bunch of theater, the NYC Ballet (best in the world), some music, a museum or two like the Neue Gallery, etc. - and feed their souls for a year? Suburban sloth.
Finished my strenuous week in NYC with Jacques Brel is alive and living in Paris, an off-Broadway revival of the 60s hit. Some think that Brel was the greatest songwriter in world history.
I don't think that (David's psalms win the contest, for me), but they are damn good. The music and the singing are extraordinary. Plus they have kept the basics of Brel, but added a bit of appropriate stage movement. And the Zipper Theater (in an old zipper factory) is the funkiest place: you sit on old car seats. They have a bar in front, with a sign that says "Please bring your drinks into the theater."
Brel died in 1978, but he is alive and well at the Zipper. The NY Sun's review is here. The 1966 original recording is at Amazon.
