“A truce with oneself is never final”

Psychologies: Can we think that psychoanalysis is able to solve all our problems «come from the past»?

Andre Green: I would not generalize: psychoanalysis should not deal with everything, heal this and that. There are people among us for whom psychoanalysis is simply not shown: they carry such a burden of the past that is too heavy for analysis. Others have a particular form of personality, described Freud «negative therapeutic reaction»: they cannot bear it when the treatment moves forward, they reject it, choosing detours. Still others have a peculiar addiction to misfortune, a tendency to masochism, which they cannot get rid of.

Andrey Rossokhin: It is unlikely that psychoanalysis will help someone who is absolutely convinced that all his problems have external causes. “Now, if I married another, everything would be different”; “I would have stayed at my old job, everything would have gone much better”; “If I had other parents, there would not be such torment” … In fact, this is how our resistance manifests itself. The complexity of any life story is not only and not so much in a set of external circumstances, but in the inconsistency of the inner world of a person, the world of his passions, inclinations, childhood sexuality, shame, aggression, self-punishment and fantasies. Psychoanalysts do not aim to free a person from his past or force him to reconsider his entire life history. The meaning of psychoanalysis is for the patient to discover his inner world, be surprised by it, come into contact with it, feel it, process something from it and enjoy this work. Then he will have the strength to move forward.

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Why can’t some people get along with a relatively easy past, while others successfully overcome even deeply traumatic events?

A.G.: We don’t know why we react so differently. Everyone has their own life. And in any case, it never develops irrevocably, once and for all. We may come across the consequences of some traumatic events long after they happened. Imagine that a child lost his mother at birth and suffered greatly from this, but was brought up and loved by others. It seems that everything is fine with him: he has grown, succeeded both in work and in his personal life. And suddenly, at some point, he begins to have severe somatic disorders: anxiety, insomnia, heart attacks … The psyche can manifest itself at any moment.

If we can recall the events that hurt us, will it help us?

A. R .: No, it won’t help. The point is not just to remember a difficult event and thoroughly understand how and why it hurt us. Or relive and re-feel it all over again. This most likely won’t change anything. But if, as a result of long and complex mental work with traumatic events, a certain mystery occurs, if suddenly a spark flashes between thinking and experiencing, thought meets feeling — then we discover a new understanding, a new meaning of the past.

A.G.: We think we remember important moments, but in fact we are crowding them out with other, even more important ones. If a child has lost his father, simply establishing this fact will not be enough. After all, we do not know why the father left; perhaps the mother forbade even talking about him, and the child had no opportunity to imagine the reasons for this departure. The mother, too, could be overwhelmed by this event, and therefore not capable of spiritual intimacy with the child. We must keep in mind the totality of the facts, and not be content with the statement: «He did not have a father.»

If the patient notices that he constantly finds himself in similar situations, repeating the same actions, will he be able to break out of this vicious circle?

A. R .: Psychoanalysis is just for this and serves. Although this is not the only way. And yet, to avoid repetition, you need a click, an insight. And in order for it to happen, we must first develop our inner abilities to realize and comprehend our relationships with others. This is difficult, because our consciousness perfectly explains everything to us: “I live with the wrong person”; “Every time I have crazy bosses”; “All because there are no prospects in our city” … There are also more cunning formulations: “This is my character.” These rationalizations help us not to look where we are afraid to look. From a psychoanalytic point of view, this fear is unconsciously connected with the primary scene, that is, with what happens outside the door of the parent’s bedroom. For a small child, the truth is unbearable that parents can love each other and enjoy each other, because for him this automatically means that he is absolutely alone, excluded from the world … And not to look in that direction and not be blinded by this frightening truth defense mechanisms are developed.

A.G.: Don’t cling to «logical» explanations that only mask the truth. An endless chewing on these rationalizations will not achieve anything unless you fully realize something radically new, when a person on the psychotherapist’s couch suddenly exclaims: “I didn’t even think of that!” While so many of us fail to see the paths to liberation, the opportunities to really approach our inner conflicts. And it happens that psychoanalysis reveals to a person the reasons for such repetitions, but they turn out to be too traumatic: what was deeply hidden comes out, forcing the patient to flee. “Truth is like the sun, it is impossible to look it straight in the face,” said the writer La Rochefoucauld, and after him the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. And even when it seems to us that we have discerned the truth, most likely this means that we have only taken a step towards it …

So what is this “inner truth”?

A.G.: This is the patient’s own truth. He comes to the analyst’s office with a certain idea about his life, about his past, and the task is to revise this idea — so that he can say to himself: “No, in fact, I experienced something completely different, what happened.» And see your story differently. Inner truth is what psychoanalysis strives for, it is a transformation, a conviction that will allow us to say: “This is what I really am. This is my truth. This is how I feel and relate to events and people. What I now understand about them … «

A. R .: Each patient tells the psychoanalyst his version of what happened to him in life. This is a defensive version, a person’s idea of ​​what he had and how. As a rule, the images of parents seem to be split into two parts: a good mother, for example, remained, and a bad one was hidden. The father is good, warm, who read a bedtime story, was forced out, but remained evil, who hates his mother … Our task is not to restore the historical truth, but to make the figures from the past more holistic and try to comprehend everything what has been repressed… Including the truth about oneself: all one’s feelings, cravings, shame, one’s “bad selves”. And then a new history will arise, closer to the historical truth than to the defensive one. The main thing here is not to lie to yourself, to understand that the world is ambivalent, that we are able to love and hate our father or mother at the same time and this does not destroy us.

How can remembering difficult moments in our lives help us change?

A.G.: It’s as if something is being released where the blockage prevented us from seeing more clearly ourselves and the reality of the dramatic circumstances we were able to experience. We are more in line with who we really are. We see more clearly, and because of this, many situations that hindered our understanding and possible changes can now be unblocked. But such a truce with oneself is never final. We are constantly building our life, building it and putting it in order … This is an endless search, a process that is always renewed.

What do you think successful psychoanalysis is?

A.G.: First of all, it is a psychoanalysis that really took place, that is, when we do not create its appearance. Then there is a feeling of satisfaction that it was possible to help the patient come close to some of his main problems. Over time, he begins to understand better what the unconscious foundation of his difficulties is. He feels more ready to deal with his problems on his own. So the point is not to say, «I’m cured!» — as if from pneumonia, which was cured in a couple of weeks and which you can forget about, even if it was deadly. No, it’s important to be able to say, «Now I have a method to understand the problems I’m facing, see what they’re about, and confront them head-on.» When our resistance is removed, psychoanalysis can continue without the help of the analyst.

A. R .: When psychoanalysis begins, both the analyst and the patient must know that one day it will definitely end. But if psychoanalysis is truly successful, the patient gets the feeling that this process is endless: he simply discovers a different value of this movement towards himself, which can last for a very long time … And for the analyst, this new sensation of the patient is the first indicator that after some time he will be able to continue the analysis himself. He acquires a psychoanalytic «I», becomes a psychoanalyst for himself.

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How much time is required for this?

A. R .: I think at least four years. It is important to avoid extremes — to be too pragmatic about the analysis («I explored the depths of my soul for 50 meters — is this enough for me to live happily?») Or, on the contrary, to «hook» on this thirst for self-knowledge, cling to the psychoanalyst, feeling absolute the uniqueness of this work, which will never happen again. After the meetings with the analyst are over, the patient can continue the journey into himself on his own. The unconscious is infinite, but when exploring it, we must treat it with respect: like any natural element, it serves as a source of strength and at the same time is fraught with danger.

A.G.: The question of time is not so important. Everything depends on the patient. There are those who come to the couch for more than ten years in a row, and all to no avail. And others are able to do all the work well in four years. Psychoanalysis is not like conventional therapy when diagnosed from the very beginning. When a person comes for analysis, his history is already 20-25 years old, sometimes more, and neither he nor the psychoanalyst knows exactly what kind of scars she left. Advice like «start running in the morning» or «take a lover» is useless. These are empty words. In our world, where the main deity is the computer, we hope that everything can be settled by just pressing the right key. So no! Life is very different, and in spite of everything, I think that psychoanalytic work is the best way to help people.