Chapter 1
My traumatic journey towards becoming a psychoanalyst
From phenomenology and person-centered psychotherapy to Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest school to relational psychoanalysis
Arnold Wm. Rachman
My grandmother as a therapeutic role model
In the days of my grammar and high school years, I remember being most interested in two areas of study, history and archeology, which seems, in retrospect, academic areas well suited to the eventual study of psychoanalysis. In addition, to my intellectual interest, I believe my emotional/interpersonal experience with my maternal grandmother, Bertha Metsch-Beispiel, whom I called “Granny,” was significantly connected to my becoming a helpful professional.
When I was 8–9 years old, the closest adult males in my family, my maternal grandfather and father, died. Consequently, my mother became intensely depressed. She also had the task of becoming the family provider. My grandmother then became the central figure in our household for my sister and me. We generally had contact with my mother on the weekends. During the week, she held down two jobs: one in the daytime and one at night. On the weekends she seemed depressed, distant and detached. She rarely planned any activities with her children. I grew up feeling she was not interested in me.
My relationship with Granny was emotionally nurturing. When I began to discuss my relations with my grandmother in my personal analysis, I began to think of it as a “Life-Saving Force,” an idea I developed during my first year of analytic training (Rachman, 1969). My grandmother, in all the reflections I have done on my own and other peoples’ lives, was not only a necessary and sufficient condition for emotional growth, but became a therapeutic role model in becoming a psychoanalyst. I believe all helping professionals have had a therapeutic role mode in their lives that helped them define their attitude, beliefs, and feelings toward being a person who devotes their life helping others. Granny helped forge a “curative image” for me as an internal emotional/intellectual map of what it takes to help someone who is in emotional difficulty.
My first experience of a therapeutic contact between two individuals came when I was a teenager and witnessed my grandmother’s loving and therapeutic contact with a male cousin. He emotionally unraveled when he was contacted by his draft board to report for the armed services. First, he became intensely anxious and then very angry with his mother (my grandmother’s sister). He began to carry a knife and openly threatened to use his knife to kill his mother. No one could calm him down. He barricaded himself in his room. The extended family that tried to help him was in chaos. Then, one day, my cousin asked to speak to his aunt, my grandmother. At this time, I witnessed the “therapeutic presence” of a healing person (Rachman, 2017). The family could overhear the conversation between my grandmother and my cousin held in his room. Gradually, the door to his room was opened and we saw that Granny held his hand, as she talked to him in a gentle empathic, loving way. He calmed down. My grandmother was not critical or afraid of him. This 5′2′′ demure person was able to quiet the demons of the 18-year-old, near-psychotic person who brandished a knife. My cousin’s murderous rage was boiling over after he realized that he could not emotionally face a separation from his damaging mother, who had dominated, controlled and infantilized him all his life. His father was also dominated and controlled by his mother. My cousin felt so emotionally crippled that he could not tolerate the idea of having to leave his mother, who he needed for his existence. Then, when he was faced with separation from his mother, he realized she had robbed him of the capacity to be an independent person. My grandmother was the antidote to his mother.
I witnessed in that turbulent time in my adolescent years the “therapeutic presence” of my grandmother with another person. She was able to help my cousin, when he had turned away from everyone else in the family. One of the most salient things I had always said to myself about my grandmother has been, “I love being in the same room with her, I felt her love, warmth and kindness.” I completely understood that my distraught family member would find a haven in my grandmother’s presence. When I told my analyst, Betty Feldman, MA, about my grandmother and her therapeutic presence in my life and my cousin’s, she agreed. She provided me with the necessary tenderness, warmth, affirmation, praising and responsiveness that were not provided by my mother (Rachman, 1997, 2003; Rogers, 1959).
Finding psychology as an academic major in college
As I journeyed through my college, graduate school education and analytic training, it is clear to me now, that I was attached to teachers, courses and academic majors that provided for my need for responsiveness, warmth, and affirmation. The dawn of my intellectual consciousness occurred at the University of Buffalo (UB) in the 1950s. The University was a liberal academic institution, at a time when the United States was going through a conservative political period with “McCarthyism” predominating. UB was known at that time as “the Berkeley of the East.” The psychology department was headed by Olive Lester, PhD (1903–1996), a kind and interpersonally responsive person. Lester was a friendly, warm presence who parlayed her assertiveness, emotional courage, and intellectual interest into championing social issues. She made it clear that she liked me and added a note on a paper I submitted to her, for which she gave me an A, with the following statement: “Arnold, this is a very fine paper. You have the talent to be a psychologist.” There is no question this unsolicited compliment was a gift to me that I have always cherished. I tucked it away in my heart and mind as a motivator towards a career in clinical psychology.
Olive Lester came from a distinguished American WASP family who helped organized Lancaster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, New York. She graduated from the University of Buffalo in 1924, as the first person to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the school. She was the first woman to serve at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Buffalo and one of the first women in the country to lead a psychology department. As a social psychologist she was an outspoken advocate for women (Meachem, 2006). As the chairman of the Psychology Department at the University of Buffalo, one of the special contributions that Olive Lester made to the training of psychologists was to teach the introduction to psychology course. This pioneered providing the most experienced and gifted psychologist to teach the introduction to freshmen rather than a graduate student. She brought enthusiasm, experience and a kind and gentle manner to her teaching, which helped me to develop an interest in psychology. When she wrote on my final exam paper I should consider thinking about psychology as a major, I felt very lucky to have her as a teacher in my freshman year because she took the time to set me on the path towards a career in psychology. Buffalo also provided me with the opportunity to have Marvin Farber, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, and a student of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, as a teacher (Farber, 2006). Farber taught “Logic and the Scientific Method,” and introduced me to phenomenology (the study of immediate experience), empathy, and intersubjectivity. He helped open up a world of intellectual inquiry by his elegant enthusiastic presentations where one’s emotional and intellectual life could be integrated. I am also grateful to Walter Gruen, PhD and Aron Herskovitz, PhD for their guidance and support when I was a young psychology student.
The University of Chicago: Committee on Human Development, Person-Centered Psychotherapy, and democratic and liberal philosophy
My education for a doctorate at the University of Chicago enhanced the democratic and liberal ideas and experiences which began at the University of Buffalo. There were three levels of education that occurred at Chicago, interaction with scholars and clinical experiences at Chicago while I pursued a double major in clinical psychology and human development in the Committee on Human Development. The first level of education emerged from the Committee on Human Development, where I received a broad intellectual training in the social sciences where psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, biology, and any area of study that made a meaningful contribution to the scientific study of human behavior. We had the privilege to be taught by scholars in a wide range of science: the late Robert Havinghurst, PhD, a pioneer in the study of child development; the late Samuel Beck, PhD, one of the world’s experts on the Rorschach Test; William Henry, PhD, world expert on the TAT test; and Erika Fromm, PhD, an academic psychoanalyst who was an expert in clinical hypnosis. Secondly, at Chicago, we were taught the American philosophical tradition of Pragmatism, which anchored the study of human behavior in the ideas of William James (McDermott, 1977), John Dewey (McDermott, 1981) and Herbert Mead (1934). These philosophical attitudes provided a democratic, liberal, phenomenological and person-centered attitude toward human relationships.
The third level of training at the University of Chicago was the introduction to the theory and clinical experience of Client-Centered Psychotherapy, now termed Person-Centered Psychotherapy, developed by Carl Rogers (1959) and extended by students such as Eugene Gendlin (1962). The Counseling and Psychotherapy Research Center was the facility established to teach, train and research the Person-Centered Perspective.
My introduction to the Person-Centered perspective occurred during my clinical internship requirement to receive my doctorate in clinical psychology approved by both the American Psychological Association. This 12-month internship occurred at The Counseling and Psychotherapy Research Center at the University of Chicago. At the Counseling Center, I naturally immersed myself in the intellectual interpersonal, and compatible emotional climate of Client-Centered Psychotherapy. A fellow doctorate candidate decided he was going to medical school after finishing his doctorate because he felt he was treated like a second-class citizen as a psychologist. I felt completely different from him, as I was being treated like a young psychologist who has the intellect, temperament and emotional/interpersonal capacity to be a Client-Centered Psychotherapist. This initial acceptance, affirmation and empathic response to me by Rosalind Cartwright, PhD and Fred Zimring, PhD allowed me to enter analytic training with a therapeutic attitude of respect for the subjective experience of the individual, the importance of empathic understanding and the importance of a democratic attitude in relationships.
My first contact with a psychoanalyst which was very positive involved Erika Fromm, PhD, who was an associate faculty member of the Counseling Center, although she was not a client-centered psychotherapist. The University of Chicago was known for developing courses and departments that cut across different disciplines. Fromm offered courses in psychodynamics and hypnosis, provided supervision and was available for dissertation committees. She was also a faculty member in the clinical psychology department. I studied psychodynamics and hypnosis with Erika and she supervised my clinical practicum paper which was experimental design using the Thematic Apperception Test. We enjoyed a very proactive and friendly relationship. I encouraged my former wife to consult with Erika to use self-hypnosis to prepare for the birth of our first child. As a result, the birth process was very enjoyable and our son was born under ideal physical and emotional circumstances, for which I have always been enormously grateful to Erika.
Finding Ferenczi
During my analytic training and for about 10 years afterwards, I was searching for a way to integrate my Phenomenological and Person-Centered Perspective with what I felt was meaningful in my study of psychoanalysis. I had become interested in the encounter and marathon movement of the 1960s and 1970s because it integrated experiential and active measures with a psychodynamic framework (Bach, 1966; Mintz, 1971; Stoller, 1967). During this period, I was in this new kind of group therapy experience with Elizabeth Mintz, PhD, which integrated an analytic approach into her Marathon Group Therapy (Mintz, 1971). During the 1970s, using Mintz as a role model, I began to experiment with the Intensive Group Experience (Rachman, 1970). In my desire to write an article about my experience, I ran across a paper on Active Psychotherapy, which listed a reference to someone called Ferenczi. In the autumn of 1976, in the Institute’s library, I discovered who Sándor Ferenczi was. None of my colleagues or former teachers or supervisors ever referred to him or used his ideas or contributions in their work (Rachman, 1997b). So, one morning, I found myself pouring over Ferenczi’s Collected Papers (Ferenczi, 1950, 1952, 1955). Before I began reading this material, I was curious about who else at the Institute had read it. When I looked at the library card, which noted the name and date of the book borrowers, to my amazement, I was only the second person to have checked out the Ferenczi volume in about ten years. I did not know, at that moment, if my search would lead to anything fruitful.
I sat down with Volume II, which contained the paper on Ferenczi’s “active therapy” (Ferenczi, 1920). Everything that Ferenczi had written in this article was compatible with my developing active analytical perspective and my previous Person-Centered Approach, which I developed at the University of Chicago. I sat in the library reading room all morning soaking up the Ferenczi material. I was convinced at that time that Ferenczi was a clinical genius, a significant figure of psychoanalysis, and a forgotten pioneer who deserved the attention of contemporary psychoanalysis (Rachman, 2016). When I would mention my research on Ferenczi, many felt I was on a wild goose chase. They felt I was wasting my time and energy on an insignificant figure of psychoanalysis. One such scholar was a researcher on the history of Freud’s life, Peter Swales. He told me a story of his efforts that, for a time, gave me hope I would be able to find some meaningful material about Ferenczi. He said he wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Library of Congress and simply asked for all the boxes which contain the Freud materials in which he was interested. This direct correspondence produced a surprising result. One day he received all the materials he requested, Xeroxed. We decided I should do the same and request all the Ferenczi materials.
I became ecstatic, just thinking about the possibility I would have the same luck. If I got the same package of Ferenczi materials, I could enlist Paul Mattick, an esteemed German-speaking colleague scholar and friend, to help me translate it. (Paul did not know at the time, I was planning his future.) My enthusiasm waned because I never received a response from the Library of Congress. These were the days when the Library of Congress was unresponsive, which changed dramatically when Harold Blum because the Director of the Freud Archives.
Why was Ferenczi’s work unknown to generations of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists? And if he was known to others, such as Heinz Kohut, why didn’t Kohut mention Ferenczi when he discussed the issue of empathy (Rachman, 1989)? When I uncovered the answers to these questions I was, frankly, appalled. Ferenczi’s suppression was due to the politics of psychoanalysis. The suppression had nothing to do with the merit of Ferenczi’s ideas or his clinical abilities and research. The more I discovered, the greater became my admirati...
