I have
had to terminate psychoanalysis rather suddenly after several years. My issues
were childhood trauma, prolonged hospitalization of severely psychotically
depressed mother and total physical abandonment by father. I talked freely
with my analyst about my family’s financial difficulties and took loans
etc. to pay for my treatment. I felt toward the end that he just was not
hearing what I was saying. Also, I picked up on diminished empathy, lack
of concern, and the feeling like he wanted me to leave. I did not get the
reassurance I needed from him around these feelings. and given my history,
I sure needed that. My plan is to seek a practitioner that my insurance will
cover. I need to close this relationship and mourn this loss. To go back
and terminate with the psychoanalyst will feel to me like emotional suicide
in the sense that I will have been abandoned by him because once again, I
am not “good enough” (can’t pay). He has no ideAS EXCEPT TO
TELL ME THAT AS A TRAINING ANALYST i AM ALREADY RECEIVING ANALYSIS AT LOW
COST. mIND YOU, i PAY UP TO 1037.00 PER MONTH GIVE OR TAKE A FEW DOLLARS
DEPENDING ON HOLIDAYS ETC. Sorry for the recent capital letter mistakes.
How long will I feel sad? What else can I do to help my situation?
Psychoanalysis is a rigorous form of psychological treatment
that demands a considerable investment of both time and money; as you well
know, sessions are usually several times a week, if not daily. For those
who have the philosophical curiosity to look deep into their psyche, well
beyond the surface of their
symptoms, it can
be an effective treatment. But, as I said, it’s a rigorous treatment,
and analysts are trained to be emotionally neutral so as to avoid unconsciously
directing the patient into the analyst’s desire. As the psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan said, the analyst uses silence not in order to frustrate the
patient but “in order to allow the signifiers in which his frustration
is bound up to
reappear.” [1]
In this sense,
all other things being equal, your feeling that your analyst is not being
emotionally understanding would be the very reason to continue the treatment.
You were traumatized as a child, and so your psychological work is to come
to terms with feelings of being emotionally neglected. After all,
your analyst may not actually be indifferent to you; he could be using a
certain therapeutic silence to draw out of you your feelings of being abandoned,
so that you can talk about those feelings more openly.
Of course, in
your case, all other things are not equal—money is a real issue for
you. So, unless you truly want to make the financial sacrifice of valuing
psychoanalysis over all other material aspects of your life, you may need
to choose a less expensive form of treatment, such as weekly
psychodynamic
psychotherapy.
As to what you
can do to help your situation, you give a very obvious clue, even though
you yourself may not “see” it for what it is. While you were typing,
you hit the Caps Lock key accidentally and produced a whole sentence
with inverted capitalization. But instead of going back to retype
the sentence you left it as it is and gave me a token apology. Well, that’s
exactly what victims do. They’re constantly holding up their wounds in
the face of the “Other” in the hope of getting some recognition
for all their misery. To step outside the
victim role, it is
important to go back and fix your mistakes; it is important to take personal
responsibility for healing your own wounds, no matter who was responsible for
inflicting them on you in the first place.
So my advice
is to go back and
terminate gracefully
with the psychoanalyst, even if it feels like emotional suicide. Tell him
about your finances. Express your gratitude for the work you have accomplished
together over the last few years. Tell him your plans for less expensive
treatment. Be honest. It won’t be suicide. It will be your claim to
life.
___________
1.
Jacques Lacan, “The direction of the treatment and the principles of
its power.” In Écrits: A selection, trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 235.
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