The Way It Turned Out by Herant Katchadourian

Author:Herant Katchadourian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Stanford Publishing

Parallel to the changes in my personal life were changes in my attitudes toward my profession and career. It was not until I left Rochester that I realized how narrowly focused I had been on the insular views of orthodox psychoanalysis, even without becoming a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalytic orientation at Washington was far broader, and its leading light had been Harry Stack Sullivan. Its focus was on interpersonal relationships rather than intrapsychic, unconscious conflicts at the individual level. Sullivan was born in the United States, and his brand of psychoanalysis was more distinctively American than the central European Freudian import. The guardians of orthodoxy considered it suspect, if not downright heretical. I didn’t abandon Freud, but he became more fallible in my eyes.

Some of the leading psychoanalysts in Washington worked at the renowned psychiatric hospital at Chestnut Lodge at Rockville, Maryland, near Bethesda. It specialized in the treatment of schizophrenics through modified forms of psychoanalytic therapy. Treating these cases year after year with no substantial improvement, let alone a cure, took heroic patience. I was astounded to learn that one of the senior therapists had taken on his last new patient six years earlier. The reason that the hospital could stay in business was because many of the patients came from affluent families who could afford to keep them there, hoping for some amelioration if not cure. Besides, there was no reasonable alternative. It was certainly better than letting the patient languish in the bottomless pit of a state hospital.

I would occasionally be on night call at Chestnut Lodge to make some extra money. It usually meant just being there with nothing to do. One evening, when I was making my rounds, a young woman with a startlingly masklike expressionless face approached me. She asked me who I was. Instead of telling her my name, I answered her question with a question. She looked me in the eye and said, “Who the hell do you think you are—Aristotle?” Revealing nothing about oneself to patients felt like being in a straightjacket, even if it was necessary.

One of the most eminent psychotherapists at Chestnut Lodge was Dr. Otto Will. Soon after coming to Washington, I went to see him as a patient to get help in dealing with the aftermath of my separation from Sylvia and the future of our marriage. What I got instead was the Washington version of my experience with Dr. Feldman. Instead of making me lie on a couch, Dr. Will asked me to sit on a chair in one corner of his office while he sat at the opposite corner. We could not have sat farther apart, but I did not dare ask him the purpose of this strange arrangement. After I told him briefly about the problems in my marriage, Dr. Will asked me the sort of questions one usually asked schizoid characters. I was astonished. Whatever else I might be, I was not a schizoid character. However, since his specialty was dealing with schizophrenics, it seemed as if he had to put me in a similar mold to be able to deal with me.

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