Freud and Me

Sitting in Freud's booth 
at Café Landtmann, Vienna, 2008

In classic psychoanalysis, patients entered and exited the analyst’s office through different doors in order to preserve both their anonymity and the sanctity of the analytic process. There was secrecy, decorum, and a touch of stigma. 

Today’s patients and therapists alike seem brazen by comparison. Imagine what Freud would make of our crowded waiting rooms, national efforts to destigmatize psychotherapy, or Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps’ brave transparency about almost drowning in depression. 

Other famous people, from Prince Harry to Brad Pitt to Michelle Obama, have all gone on record about seeking therapy. At least some of the old stigma is no more, and you'll never guess who is back.

As a one-time analysand who gave up treatment forty years ago for more efficient methods of tackling my hang-ups, I was absolutely floored to read a recent New York Times report about a new generation embracing Freud. Once again, he is all the rage. 

At first blush, resurrecting psychoanalysis seems about as good an idea as eschewing indoor plumbing or bringing back manual typewriters. I thought Freud was dead, buried, kaput -- an anachronistic figure we gave up believing in along with the tooth fairy. 

The stereotype of the Upper West Side Jewish intellectual devotee of psychoanalysis reached its apogee around 1978, when Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for best picture and celebrated his character, Alvie Singer, as the ultimate neurotic hero. 

Freud in 1921

It was precisely then that an inspiring but misguided high school teacher who was undergoing analysis encouraged me to take my struggles to my own psychoanalyst. (This would be unthinkable today when teachers are being told in no uncertain terms to shut up and mind their own business.)

Seeing this proposition as somehow romantic and intellectually dazzling, and without the knowledge or consent of my parents, I snuck downtown to the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute. There, Dr. Schiff, a classically trained analyst, took teenage me on as a nonpaying patient (for a while, anyway). It was a preamble to college, where I embarked on on-again, off-again analysis for four years. 

Today, I cannot say that I know myself any better or function on a higher level because I spouted whatever came into my mind on a couch in Dr. Seymour Handler’s office in New Haven. (And I know, what a perfect name for an analyst! I could not have made that up.) 

As a therapy, it was a waste of time and money until 1986, when a little green-and-white capsule came along that empowered me to put some of those insights into action. 

Now, after decades of Freudian practice being out of favor both as a therapeutic modality and as a sexist and homophobic ideology, it is stunning to see the good doctor making a comeback -- and being reassessed as not so bad after all. 

I once got to see Freud's study and original psychoanalytic couch at London's Freud Museum, the site of his final home where he had fled the Nazis. 

Years later, during a 2008 trip to Vienna, I sought out his booth at Café Landtmann, an old-world, richly appointed coffee house. It was surreal to sit where he once sat. There, I recollected Freud’s influence on me as a young man enraptured by the promise and mystique of his once-revolutionary theories. 

We will have to see if the present resurgence lasts. I am rooting for Freud -- but this time, as an armchair observer, not a participant blathering on the couch. 

Freud's couch at the site of
his final home in London