by Luba Palter, MFT

Well, folks, my time at Impulse has come to an end. I am happy to report that the new Editor-in-Chief is Rebecca Shapiro. She will introduce herself next month. In the meantime, I would like to let you know a little about her. Rebecca Shapiro has been working behind the scenes on the Intensive Study Group (ISG) Committee, helping to plan and create the curriculum of NCSPP’s popular year-long courses. She will be graduating from The Wright Institute in August. Rebecca is in private practice in Oakland and is passionate about psychoanalysis. I look forward to her mark on Impulse. 

Writer Elissa Altman in her book, Motherland (2019), wrote that “gardening is a contract with hope.” I am nowhere near a gardener, but I am a sucker for a soulful metaphor. I think of psychoanalysis as a form of gardening with such a contract. How does a person/seed/plant grow? Who gets better? Who gets to live and who dies? And who drudges along till their end? What are the necessary conditions for this person in my office to flourish, to come into their own, to take up space? As poet Marge Piercy says in one of my favorite poems, The Seven of Pentacles (1982), “Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground. You cannot tell always by looking what is happening. More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.” So, I wait. I listen. I watch. I wonder. I feel. I ask. I sit quietly. I consult. I offer what care I have. What will sprout and show up here in the room between us? Both of us, my patient and I, have signed this invisible contract with possibility by coming together, week after week.

Writing for Impulse has felt like a similar contract with hope, too. I would often wonder about what I could publicly share that feels real, interesting, but without being overexposing. It has been such a pleasant surprise to discover words and sentences inside once I committed myself to this dedicated space and column. In my essays, I have often included writers and poets outside of the analytic world. My desire and mission is to see/hear/share psychoanalytic ideas in everyday life, to make/show analytic ideas as accessible, palatable, and an everyday lived experience – to bring them closer to the bodies, hearts, and souls of others and myself. Because isn’t the whole point of this endeavor to connect to oneself, to the people around us, and to find the freedom to love and contribute to this world? I am grateful for my time with the Impulse committee, NCSPP Board, new connections along the way, and for this readership.