Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

In another stroke of luck, I was able to join a lecture by a preëminent psychoanalyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

When I was in Colorado Springs, I stopped by John and Marcia’s offices hoping to catch up a bit. On John’s door I found a flyer for a class in Chicago. I sent them an email asking if we could have lunch or dinner. I heard back a couple of days later and in the interim remembered how much I enjoyed their classes, so I asked if I could sit in.

It turns out the day I was there was the second day of the summer block (a one month college course). I joined the hour or so introduction, went to lunch with John, Marcia, and a few students, and then enjoyed the lecture on "self" creation and the relevence of Freud today.

The best news was the guest lecture by noted object relations psychoanalyst Dr Frank Summers, not because class with John and Marcia isn’t excellent, but because it was unexpected. The hour for the lecture was only enough time to scratch the surface and the few sentences here can at best mention some of the vocabulary. I vigorously took notes, which even after a week I’ve yet to digest, but regardless the discussion came at a very good time. I liked his comments on a healthy self being able to regulate and assimilate its experience. I found the clinical distinction between trauma and difficult experience enlightening, that is to say, trauma is caused when the psyche is unable to manage and process difficult experiences often leading to symptoms later on. All psyches go through difficult experiences; the important part is how the experiences are dealt with. The third detail I found particularly interesting came in the following the question, "Does the way you live express who you are?" He asked whether the motivation to do something came from anxiety (from without, from defenses) or from authenticity (from within, from the self), postulating that the motivation is what’s important (for the therapist) over the content. Understanding what drives one to do a thing or act a certain way can be very enlightening. For me it helped formulate answers to a few questions I’ve been pondering; why did I shake up my world, take a giant motorcycle trip, and decide to go to graduate school?