by Danni Biondini, LMFT

Great, it’s August, the month that reminds us of what everything in psychoanalysis comes down to: you are forever going to navigate a jagged psychic landscape of separation and loss. Life is a series of alterations between getting-close-to-someone and being-let-down-by-them. All human relationships are, at the core, a painful reminder of death. 

My analyst is going on vacation for three weeks. 

The response you have to this might indicate what side of psychoanalysis you’re on: is the analyst’s requisite August vacation a trauma or an opportunity for growth? Hymer (1993) proposed that the analyst’s vacation need not be traumatizing but can be “enriching" and “expansive” (yes, she means for both!). The classic analytic cliche of traumatized patient rests on the ol’ deficit perspective in psychoanalysis, she explains. As analyst, are you the pre-oedipal mother, fostering regression and dependency while treating your patient as an adult-sized baby? If so, of course this vacation recapitulates an earlier loss. You were once abandoned Oedipally, and here we go again.

But if you’re of the belief that patients are made of something sturdier than stupid vulnerable human attachments, this need not be a crisis, but an opportunity for growth. Grinstein (1995) saw this as a time for the patient to consolidate the gains of therapy. From this perspective, you wouldn’t interpret your departure at the level of goo-goo-ga-ga when your patient has surpassed that stage and may be ready for words. Or ready for a world bigger than you. 

My response, as I ponder my own internal experience, is: Why not both? 

I’m pretty sure I’m doing psychoanalysis right if it evokes complex feelings about the nature of dependency. Of course I care that my analyst is briefly leaving me; who else would I pay to care about me? (Upside: saving that money.) But, also, this might mean he’s taken on an oversized importance in my life, for a rx that’s confined to 10’ x 10’ square feet. His vacation is a reminder that I have a life beyond the couch. Is this what we mean by growth? We expand our internal landscape so that more things can matter in it. 

It might be a cliché to assume that the analyst’s vacation is experienced as traumatic, but then the whole psychic landscape is replete with cliché. There are only so many feelings that exist, and loss is primary among them. Freud agreed. 

But Freud also agreed that vacations are important for expanding the mind and “living in freedom and beauty.”   

I know this because in my obsessional attempt to ward off feelings, I scrolled through thirty-plus pages of PEP-Web results for the search term “vacation,” and found it frequently mentioned in Freud, Fliess, and Ferenczi’s respective Letters to Each Other. They looked forward to their yearly vacations and seemed to vacation constantly, or at least multiple times a year. Freud even wrote to Fliess in 1896: “I have been so fortified by my vacation that I felt nothing at all.” 

If the founder of psychoanalysis thought vacations were important for emotional obliteration, I’ll book my flight now.  

Although Freud did sometimes put his patients first, like in 1890 when he cancelled plans with Fliess, explaining, ”I am writing to you today to tell you very reluctantly that I cannot come to Berlin…since my most important patient is just going through a kind of nervous crisis.” 

Interesting. 

I won’t concoct a crisis to remind my analyst of my importance, but what am I going to do while he’s away? I’m sure I’ll find ways to sublimate my longing and expand my world. There’s a meme on the internet about people getting haircuts every time their therapist goes away. I’ve upped the stakes of bodily signification: the last time my analyst went on vacation, I got a tattoo. What was I supposed to do? I already have bangs.

Write in to let us know how you’re navigating this August vacation period: danni.biondanni@gmail.com