Thank you for this very moving and personal reflection on Chanda Griffin and Julie Hyman as they take on the roles of Co-Directors of MIP. Thank you for reminding us of all that they have contributed to MIP up to this point. It is particularly impactful because of your history of being in training with them, your involvement with CORE and your own knowledge of being a Co-Director of MIP. Your class produced 3 leaders for the Institute. Thank you for this personal and important history!

Lorraine

Thank you Lorraine for your comment on my Wolstein article. So you are his psychoanalytic granddaughter? Nice to meet you! You know Ben had no children, and I believe he would have valued the psychoanalytic relation. You describe him as alive, honest, and vital. I agree and believe those descriptors are quite accurate. His aliveness and vitality were best understood as his commitment to interacting directly and closely in his anlaysis with a patient. His honesty was practiced in every interaction with him, as if it was a part of his personality. It probably was. Looking back at my experience with Ben, his honesty was an invitation. At some point in the treatment I realized I was being invited to be as equally as honest and interactive. There was an experience of freedom involved in taking the risks to say to him thoughts and feelings I would have “normally” kept to myself, denied or distorted. To his credit, he was never offended by my reactions. I think he considered it a necessity to be as receptive to my observations of his character as I was trying to be to mine. Also, I understand his aliveness and vitality as his ability to be “present” in the psychoanalytic relationship. I believe Ben Wolstein truly enjoyed a close encounter and the emotional intimacy that occured when two people openned up to each other. He saw it as the most healing of interactions people can have in a relationship. And you know, Ben Wolstein wasn’t all challenge and directness. There were times when I took the risk to be vulnerable and open with minimal or no defensiveness and he would get (in my subjective perception) “soft and misty.” He’d go quiet and the eyes would get very gentle. I believe those were moments when he could relate to many of the struggles I was having in my treatment at the time. Thank you Lorraine for the opportunity to reflect on my treatment experiences with Ben. Tom Jordan

Thank you Blair for your kind remark. In fact, I do consider myself lucky to have worked with Ben Wolstein. Prior to seeing Ben, I had a very disappointing long-term analysis with with a classical Freudian. The treatment ended badly when I chose to terminate after years of being unsatisfied and not progressing. The interactive relationship with Wolstein provided an opportunity to open myself up in ways that I had not experienced in my previous therapy. I made more progress, in a shorter period of time, got married while I was in treatment, and after eight years of analysis with Ben I felt I had emotionally separated from my family of origin and developed a more secure sense of myself as an individual. Ben’s emphasis on welcoming the unique individual into the dialogue of the therapy was hard to resist. I had never really felt that anyone in my life had been that interested in who I was as an individual beyond the surface personas we all develop to cope with life in our interpersonal experiences. I think of it as an opportunity to truly be yourself with another person who tolerates or enjoys it, either way. I hope now as a senior analyst, that psychological individuation as a therapeutic experience will not be relrgated to the obscure periphery of psychoanalytic theory and practice, but remain an important experience of therapeutic freedom in psychoanalysis going forward. Thanks Blair for this opportunity to respond. Tom Jordan

Wendy,

Thank you for reading and for your thoughts! It really is wonderful to share my experience and connect with our community through writing. I love how you framed the delicate balance of “feeding/holding” patients vs. sitting in the pain. I appreciate your insight so much and I am glad this resonates.

All my best,
Lindsay