I felt, even years back, I could benefit from a psychoanalysis. This was not exactly a rational wish. Of course and I had both attraction, resistance and even a little embarrassment at the thought of being psychoanalyzed at all, in any form modern cognitive in a chair, or on grandfather Freud’s couch. In fact, I never was able to justify the seeking any professional help. I imagined I would be laughed at for admitting the only dumb reason I had to offer was that I wanted to explore me. This desire for analysis was not new with me, it had formed over the years, mainly from the movie versions of psychotherapists. I understood there nearly everything was
dramatically distorted to make some story work. Most these movie stories were of the patient having some dark guilt haunting him, causing murderous bad dreams, strange symptoms, dizzy spells, phobias, compulsions, kleptomania, amnesia, These all resolved when the mind doctor uncovered and exposed the cause, which was something dramatically horrible, repressed and forgotten. From this and some various reality checks I made myself, I came to see I had as desire for analysis with an image of receiving hopeful understanding, forgiveness and painless repair. And on the other hand images of crafty blackmailers, Svengali’s who took your very soul and used it for their own perverse purposes. As a further considered was the sexual undertones of the couch and thoughts of venerability or desire for sex as a magical solution for something missing in my life. I feared things like that being being cleverly being exposed (or I really wanted to confessed too) from my memories. How could I ever own up and face my not repressed at all occasional mind-boggling sexual fantasies, and my now and then awareness my unwonted traits, ones with traces of avarice, envy and hatred which I struggled with in adolescence. And Oh Yeah- as when I did not get my way as a child I felt I was being abused and misunderstood. Also I believed, that I was for the most part a textbook example of normal adjusted adult and feared being laughed at for even presenting myself for any sort of authentic counseling or therapy. Yet still I was yearning to explore in myself what was the mysterious unconscious that my movie and TV therapists were so often referring to? Was it really the authentic unconscious of Freud and Jung? Where dreams, fantasies, complexes, repression’s and aberration really to be taken seriously as being part of me? I am a prolific dreamer, I dream every night, I fantasize often, watch lots of TV, read a few romance novels. Is that neurotic, self-indulgent or what? I have over all a strong bond to my family, my aberration’s are minor, but aberrations nevertheless. But it was actually, the Sopranos Saga (all seven seasons) that really got to me thinking about psychoanalysis and possibility of a psychoanalysis self-performed (Quirky I thought at the time.) I understood, the role of Dr. Melfi treating the criminal sociopath, Tony Soprano but I found I wanted to scream to her.”Change him”- YET, knowing-how dull the story would de if she succeeded. I felt like both she and Tony- fictional characters as though they are–were somehow both aspects of a split self or something I also had a vague connection to. Could I somehow echo this split at some deeply repressed level? I craved to know. Irrational as it may seem to me now, the stupid story fired my interest in analyzing myself, Am I crazy?, Am I just over identifying?– I said to myself- all this stuff is way out of my league. Still stuff entering both, my TV view and some echo in my head kept stirring asking how or what would you do if you if you had the opportunity to be psychoanalyzed? I don’t know. As the show continued I had the really dumb thought; If I don’t analyze Dr. Melfi she is never going to help gangster, Tony. None of this made sense until I replaced Dr. Melfi with that part of myself that aimed at being helpful yet had failed to be truly helpful to my own related family members, where family feuds, abuse, alcoholism, divorce, vindictiveness and suicide, fills out the genealogical chart. This is an the helpful self I would like to be and Tony with a self that never could really be. I also began to note content entering my own dream world. I found I was doing a kind of rewrite of some the scenes of Melfi-Tony therapy sessions. As early as the thrid season in my dreams I was telling Tony to get back seriously to his appearently very intermittent analysis that was not produceing any results and he was becomeing an increaseingly violent antisocial murderous no-good. End Part 1. First sparks of the desire to psychoanalysis myself are starting to start small fires in my head that are about get hot but not yet a conflagration
Coming Next: Part 2: A SOPRANO-MANIAC’S SELF-SEARCHING AND DR. MELFI-TONY REWIND.
Next post- I open my dream book from twenty years back and you can help me analize it!!
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WHY and How I Do My Self-Analysis -(JoAnn) “CRYBABYSTILL”- Invited Guest Blogger. BUT- first the Irrational reasons I started it.