Green Your Psychoanalysis

Conserve your energy; lie on the couch. Recycle your patients' projective identifications. Beta into alpha is Bion's version of compost. Go organic; free associate. Use solar energy and schedule sessions during daylight. Consider fueling manic episodes with biodiesel or ethanol. Think of the environmental impact of your patients' shouting or your shouting in your analyst's office. Walk, bike, skate or take MUNI to sessions, remaining secure in your analytic identity even if clutching a bus transfer or a skateboard. Recycle your ghosts and turn them into ancestors.

Be mindful of toxic runoff of psychotropic medications into the Bay. Zero emissions are a good thing, but don't waste the analytic hour in silence. Save trees by eliminating paper checks and paying or taking fees in cash. (Full disclosure: After reading Argentinean analyst, Horacio Etchegoyan, mention the 'French way' of paying for analysis in cash, I presented my analyst with a very large wad of green bills at the end of the month, which he promptly refused.) Think of reverie as the power saver feature. If unanalyzed, consider your carbon footprint on others around you to be ... well, Bigfoot. The half-life of transference is twice that of plutonium. You, your patient and the entire treatment constitute an ecosystem. As analytic therapists, we all drill for fossil fuel.

Your analyst is not a renewable resource. You only have one life. Use it wisely. You only have one analyst. Or two. Well, maybe three. Remember, Freud described the unconscious as something only glimpsed as if a shadow on the wall cast by a lamp. Last one to terminate, please turn off the lights.

Cleopatra Victoria, MFT
IMPULSE Editor