Interview with Joan Peters, author of “Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis”

Understanding: Memoirs of Psychoanalysis, We explain how it works and how it feels to reach you, to relive your intimacy, wild transfers, and traumatic experiences on your way to treatment. I wrote it to celebrate the analyst’s skills to free me from lifelong anxiety and depression that have no meaning in my truly good life. As I wrote, I discovered a kind of mission to let readers know what they’ve learned about the spirit they might help them, whether they’re in treatment or not.

2. Can you talk about your treatment journey, the obstacles you faced, and the changes you have experienced?

I started psychoanalysis at the age of 27. Because my nightmare that I woke up screaming several times a week has recurred. My lover, tired of awakening, asked me to find a therapist and said, “Something is scaring you, you’re scaring me.” The newly-built psychoanalyst with a touch of Sherlock Holmes helped us investigate childhoods filled with secrets and mystery. Together, we used information from interviews with relatives to bully the meaning of nightmares and the source of my fears. Her support allowed me to build a fulfilling life, both in the right partner and work for me, but I still faced high anxiety and deep depression.

A second psychoanalysis revealed the reason. This time, treatments were created to solve my difficulties related to analysts. Like mistrust of strangers, distanced defense, and the need to control analysis, after the session I gradually warmed up to the caring attention this person I had trained to train me. It was drawn into a childhood where she longed for exactly what she had offered. A responsible adult who ultimately takes some responsibility for something that was so badly wrong in my early years.

3. What advice would you give to people who struggle with different types of treatment but have not experienced understanding or breakthroughs?

In my experience, finding the right therapist is key to getting the right help. I “shop” and studied for the therapist Today’s Psychology “Find a therapist” until you can identify some great candidates. I first spoke to them on the phone, then interviewed three of my favorites and asked them pointlessly if they could give me what I thought I needed. In both treatment experiences, I chose people who felt mutually connected (despite the cultural differences in one case). That’s the beginning.

If you find out you’re not getting what you wanted, I believe you have to deal with the tension, even the anger that may arise when you ask for it and do so. My criticism of the analyst turned out to be more about my own difficulties than her inadequacy, but I always felt I was getting sufficient I’ll come back from her. If not, it may be time for a change.

4. You write about how you formed a close relationship with your psychoanalyst and how it changed over time as your perception of yourself evolved. That’s something others should expect and how will it help them heal?

The entire life of a patient is believed by many psychoanalysts today to be part of their relationship with an analyst. Your assumptions are about yourself, how you position yourself, how you cherish, you feel distrust and disgust, and how you can form healthy intimacy. That’s your “transfer” to them, what you project into them from your own history. I projected my mother’s “inadequate care” onto an analyst. It took me two years to discover how far I am with an analyst. In reality, she defends herself from rejection or disappointment at her control and her judgmental response.

It was after I crashed a few times – I literally crashed my car when I arrived for an appointment – and I felt both her authentic care and the support of her clever interpretation, my trust in her grew. But it grew into such a full-blown dependency that I panicked when she had to leave a week or when she wasn’t in perfect harmony with me. I trusted her well and acknowledged and investigated her long buried dependence. Understanding that it was soothed, I brought much greater intimacy to her, not just with her, but with others.

5. How can someone face trauma and pain in the past when they are buried deeply in the past?

That’s all. The right analyst balances being challenging and collaborative. They go at an acceptable pace. You may have moments of terror, but you should feel overall safety with this person. Quarantine was my problem and I didn’t understand it. My analyst recognized my basic anxiety and distrust of others, and, as she said, “difficult” in it – her perseverance, her understanding of my regular rejection, and interpretations that led to my breakthroughs.

My mother was tough. She had never read children and rarely let out any affection. Through words and deeds, she taught me not to rely on anyone and not to need people. But of course I needed them, and the need for them was buried and embarrassed by me, so it was driven into my unconscious, and there it was hopeless and twisted. After the analyst pulled it out, I met myself face to face with myself and myself, in traumatic loss. But I didn’t have it all myself anymore. There was an analyst to guide me.

6. Where can I find it online?

Find me online untanglingjoan.com