This is what we make conscious—
the patterns that disable and limit
people—the ones that give ulcers either to
the individuals themselves or to recipients in
their orbit.
We understand these patterns and with
painstaking effort help the afflicted come to
understand them in themselves and others.
We help them respond strategically instead of
reacting impulsively or holding back endlessly.
We help people separate the wheat from the
chaff, see the forest through the trees, find
the leading edge, sort through competing
priorities, and make rightful claims and necessary
renunciations. We help them develop an
ethical flexibility of mind and attitude, knowing
when to be a stickler and when to give a wink
and a nod, when to finesse a situation and
when to play strictly by the rules, when to
speak up and when to suck it up.
We help people navigate power dynamics, make adaptive
distinctions and discriminations, and pick
their battles. A psychoanalytic “read” can “pull”
for good outcomes and help avoid blunders or
traps. We help tame our baser instincts and
harness optimal aggression, assertion, competition,
intimacy, and sexuality instead of ending up
mired in destructive, cut-throat aggression,
impotent rage, or dehumanizing sexuality.
We help people be patient or impatient as
circumstances dictate, suffer appropriately but
not excessively, and rejoice to the utmost
when warranted. We help people grow,
change, integrate, modulate, decrease self-absorption,
regard themselves accurately, take
themselves seriously but not too seriously,
free up emotional energy in the service of
creativity and mastery—in short, become their
best selves.
The reverberations go well beyond the individual,
fostering richer and fuller family life, as
well as functional and productive organizations,
all with enormous ripple effect. Our
work can help break the kinds of destructive
cycles which, if left untreated, keep echoing
through the generations.
—Wendy Jacobson, Why Bother? A Psychoanalytic Graduation Speech