DISEASE
Elinor Carucci, Manhatten
What Will It Be?
Lynne ZEAVIN
I wake from a dream. In the dream, I say, to no one in particular, “Look outside.” It appears as an exhortation. I realize it is only myself I am talking to, trying to remind myself of beauty, of the natural world, of possibility, of promise, of hope. I am needing to remind myself of these now because really, the world is sick, and although we are going on living in our world here, I know that death is not far and is all around us. I have been wondering about the fate of psychoanalysis, particularly for those of us who practice in urban settings. I have long worked in New York City, where I have taken for granted my ability to meet my patients in person, shake their hands at the outset and endings of treatment, work in proximity to them, and not fear should they come to sessions sick or otherwise unwell. There is, undoubtedly, so much loss. I hold onto work as a lifeline, though, even while now working remotely.
For many years I have been in a distance analysis myself, the distance being the Atlantic Ocean, the analyst in London, the patient, me, in New York City. I embarked on this analysis at another time of too much loss, my oldest brother dying suddenly, a dear friend dying one year later, and another soon after that. I felt myself slipping into a melancholic fog, and I wanted help. Though finished with a training analysis with a person I had deeply valued and indeed loved, Shelley Orgel, I wanted to work with a Kleinian analyst. I had been working with Kleinian supervisors for many years, and that just somehow seemed the right next move in my own development as a psychoanalyst. Now, in addition to being the patient in remote analysis, meeting with my analyst on Skype (with no image), I am also the analyst at the other end of the line. My sessions with my analyst over these many years have given me a belief that this is indeed real work, that useful work, even 18
DIVISION | R E V I E W
SUMMER 2020
profound work, can be done. There is no doubt that when I walk into my analyst’s London office, I feel differently engaged—I am always relieved to be there. And maybe the sweep of analysis changes. Perhaps in the room with her, my anxieties rise more quickly to the surface, maybe these can be muted when one calls from the comfort of one’s home. After all, there is something to the fact that ordinarily, patients enter our spaces, habituate to our schedules, and see the other patients whom we treat. When our patients do not have to confront these bits of evidence of our independent and personal lives, something can seem more equitable, and perhaps the seeds of the negative transference are more dispersed, less fertile. There is no doubt that something changes on the phone or on Zoom. But I am both hearing in supervisees’ work and certainly feeling in my own that psychoanalysis—at a distance—though presenting new difficulties, is possible.
