Chapter 6: One of Many Stories about Freud: My Story as a Freudian Clinician¹

I should preface my lecture with some of my own therapeutic and clinical insight—namely, that this lecture is selective. By selective I refer to the bias of my own egocentricity and the role psychoanalysis has played in my interests, values, and intellectual growth. Since both Freud and I were psychotherapists, I believe it is fitting to begin the lecture this morning with a few quotes from the conclusion of James Davies’ book, The Making of Psychotherapists: An Anthropological Analysis. Davies (2009) asks, “What are the distinctive aims of the psychodynamic institute? How do these influence the professional socialization of trainee practitioners?” (p. 251) His response to these questions parallels the idea of Freud’s Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937) and the therapeutic question of whether or not there is a natural end to an analysis. Davies writes,