“The Portable Analyst” Part 3
Part 3 - How it feels to sit with another person as we turn a story from something toxic, to something healing.
Part 3 of 4: Nomads – refugees from the outside world, in which we reflect on the impact of external events on the room and the indivuals in it.
In Part 2 of the Portable Analyst we explored the extraordinary reflections of the Franco American artist, Louise Bourgeois. Every person who comes into a consulting room has a unique need and a unique histroy; yet we can all share similar emotions. For Bourgeois it was guilt, and her means of coming to terms with it can be shared by all of us in reflecting on therapeutic work.
One of the sources of Bourgeois’ guilt had roots in her leaving France, with her American husband in 1939. Staying behind were her father and brother Pierre. (Her mother had died in 1932). She thus became a nomad, while her family remained in the wreckage of World War II.
…I can complain and I find excuses to my failures as a woman of my femininity-I despise myself and vilify myself and I despise women. It is a pretext to be a man- at that time Jacques Bourgeois is a good student. I have to give up the piano and math… (Bourgeois, 2019)
It is perhaps no surprise that in the 1940’s she created among other sculptures in a series called Personnages, one called the Portable Pierre which she carried from room to room. (Nixon, 2012) Pierre was her brother, missing from her life as the consequence of war. So Bourgeois also gave us a portable personnage to represent a companion who comes with us from room to room.
The room in which I have been seeing patients for the past two years is an archetype of the containing rooms. And so far, only I have physically sat in it. It came into being during the first lockdown of the pandemic, in March 2020, so while many of my patients have seen it, it is only what can be seen in the frame of a video screen. It is a room in my house in Buckinghamshire, a rural county about an hour from London. I had been using another room two days a week to see local patients before lockdown. But that room had unsatisfactory network connections, so for a few weeks, my patients “saw” me in a study in a hut at the bottom of the garden, where the network periodically disappeared altogether. Finally we all came together in this room with the six-paned window and the M’ikimaw bowl. So, like nomads we wandered for a bit until finding a resting place, near the warmth of a local area network node.
I had to reimagine the safe space, and then enable it to function reliably. The first casualty was the shared material container. But time, and the therapist remained, along with a reimagined room, one end of which is the patient’s creation.
It is surprising to describe me and my patients since 2020 as nomads when physically wewere often only permitted out of our homes for half an hour, and not permitted to go farther than five miles. Even my Buckinghamshire patients had to adapt because they could not enter my house. In contrast to my countryside patients, some of my London patients had wandered with me through four moves I had made over 12 years. The first two of such moves I planned over several months, preparing the patients carefully for the shift, and allowing several weeks afterwards to find room for their anger or despair. More than once I heard the impatient variation on the theme “Well, you’re here” and an instant return to what mattered most, that is the communication of pain and a deep need to be heard.
Ideally, one does not want to spring a fundamental shift on patients. But sometimes it is unavoidable. A sudden lockdown means we must be prepared to move instantly and be able to travel instantly to another safe place. In this environment I heard variations on the theme, “But you are the constant.” I’ve come to wonder whether we infantilise our patients in all the careful wrapping and unwrapping of material space, as if they did not have the capacity to work their way into an alternative safe space.
Note:
“The portable analyst” - I borrowed the title from Mignon Nixon, describing a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. (Nixon, 2012)This is the second in a series of Clinical Memoirs. The first, Therapists and Patients at the Epicentre of a Pandemic of Not knowing can be found here www.therapyroute.com/article/therapists-and-patients-at-the-epicentre-of-a-pandemic--of-not-knowing-by-a-foster
Anne Foster, MA, FPC (Fellow), UKCP is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice in Buckinghamshire, UK, although one of the strange gifts of the pandemic is the ability to be present for people through technology that makes borders truly liminal. She is a writer and presenter. [email protected]
Works Cited - This bibliography refers to works consulted and cited in all four parts, and will be repeated in each part
Abram, J. B. (Ed.). (2019). The Enigma of the Hour: Display Case Compendium: 100 years of Psychoanalytic Thought curated by Simon Moretti with Goshka Macuga and Dana Birksted-Breen. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 100:1481-1613, 100. Retrieved February 2, 2022, from https://pep-web.org/search/document/IJP.100.1481A?page=P1548&preview=IJP.100.1481A&q=blank%20screen%20
Akhtar, S. (2009). Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
Arquitectura-G. (2021). Leopold Banchini: Not Nomadic. apartamento(27), pp. 193-216.
Bourgeois, L. (2019). The Spider and the Tapestries. Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
Bronfen, E. (2012). Contending with the Father: Louise Bourgeois and her Aesthetics of Reparation. In P. Larratt-Smith (Ed.), Return of the Repressed (Vol. 1, pp. 101-114). London: Violette Ltd.
Caper, R. (1999). A Mind of One's Own. London: Routledge.
Cardinal, M. (1993). Les mots pour le dire. London: British Classical Pressan imprint of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
de Waal, E. (2010). The Hare with Amber Eyes. London: Chatto & Windus.
Foster, A. (2020). Therapists and Patients at the Centre of a Pandemic of Not knowing. Retrieved 2021, from TherapyRoute.com: https://www.therapyroute.com/article/therapists-and-patients-at-the-epicentre-of-a-pandemic-of-not-knowing-by-a-foster
Hirsch, E. (2021). Derek Walcott; The art of poetry no. 37. In Poets at Work; Interviews from the Paris Review (pp. 230-271). New York: Paris Review of Books.
Hockney, D., & Gayford, M. (2016). A History of Pictures. From the Cave to the Computer Screen. London: Thames & Hudson.
Holmes, J. (2001). The Search for the Secure Base; Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy. Hove: Routledge.
Holmes, J. (2020). The Brain has a Mind of its Own. London: Confer.
Indiana, G. (2019). Gary Indiana on the psychoanalytic writings of Louise Bourgeois – Hauser & Wirth. Retrieved from www.hauserwirth.com/ursula: https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/25821-gary-indiana-psychoanalytic-writings-louise-bourgeois/
Kuspit, D. (2012). Louise Bourgeois in Psychanalysis with Henry Lowenfeld. In P. Larratt-Smith (Ed.), The Return of the Repressed (Vol. 1, pp. 17-30). London: Violette.
Küster, U. (2018). Louise Bourgeois. Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
Leader, D. (2019). Bacon and the Body. In Bacon and the Mind; art, neuroscience and psychology (pp. 62-97). London: Thames and Hudson; Estate of Francis Bacon.
McLane, M. (2021). Susan Howe; The Art of Poetry No. 97. In V. Seshadri (Ed.), Poets at Work; Interviews from the Paris Review (pp. 272-303). New York: Paris Review Editions.
Munro, A. (1996). Selected Stories. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Nixon, M. (2012). L. In P. Laratt-Smith (Ed.), The Return of the Repressed (pp. 85-100). London: Violette.
Ogden, T. (2015). On Potential Space. In M. Boyd Spelman, & F. Thomson-Salo (Eds.), The Winnicott Tradition; Lines of Development - Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades (pp. 121 - 137). London: Karnac Books.
Ogden, T. H. (1994). The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 75:3-19.
Preta, L. (Ed.). (2015). Geographies of Psychoanalysis; Encounters between cultures in Iran. Mimeses International.
Rayner, E. (2015). Two Pioneers in the history of infant mental health; Winnicott and Bowlby. In M. B. Spelman, & F. Thomson-Salo (Eds.), The Winnicott Tradition (pp. 363-370). London: Karnac Books.
Resnik, S. (2007). Biografie dell'Inconsio. Rome: Borla.
Rovelli, C. (2021). Helgoland. London: Allen Lane an imprint of Penguin Books.
Schinaia, C. (2016, 05 22). Psychoanalysis and Architecture: The Inside and the Ouside, by Cosimo Schinaia. Retrieved 05 29, 2018, from https://karanacology.com: karnacology.com/2016/05/22/psychonalysis-and-architecture
Schinaia, C. (2016). Psychoanalysis and Architecture; The Inside and the Outside. London: Karnac.
Singer, L. (. (2021, spring/summer). Louise Bourgeois. apartamento, pp. 82-113.
St Clair, K. (2016). Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray Press.
Street, S. (2020). The Sound of a Room; Memory and the Auditory Presence of Place. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Tate Museum of Modern Art. (2022, March 18). The Art of Louise Bourgeois. Retrieved 2022, from www.tate.org.uk/art/artists: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois
The Art Of Memory; Pierre Bonnard. (2019, January 2021). London, England. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pierre-bonnard-781/art-memory
Verhaeghe, P., & De Ganck, J. (2012). Beyond the Return of the Repressed: Louise Bourgeois's Chtonic Art. In Larratt-Smith (Ed.), Louise Bourgeois The return of the repressed (pp. 115 - 128). London: Violette Eidtions.
Verhaegue, P. (2008). On Being Normal and Other Disorders. London: Karnac.
Vickers, N. (2020). Winnicott's notion of 'holding' as applied to serious physical illness. BJP, 36(4), 610-620.
Who is Louise Bourgeois. (2022, March 18). Retrieved from www.tate.org.uk/kibds: https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-louise-bourgeois
Zagajewski, A. (2021, May 14). Tart Cherries, Sweet Cherries. Times Literary Supplement, 11. (C. Cavanagh, Trans.)
Anne is a qualified Psychotherapist (Registered), based in Speen, United Kingdom.
With a commitment to mental health, Mrs Foster provides services in English and French, including Psychotherapy (Dynamic).
Mrs Foster has expertise in Anxiety Disorders, Bereavement and Loss and Depression.
Click here to schedule a session with Mrs Foster.
Important:
TherapyRoute does not provide medical advice. All content is for informational purposes and cannot replace consulting a healthcare professional. If you face an emergency, please contact a local emergency service. For immediate emotional support, consider contacting a local helpline.
Find a Therapist
Find skilled psychologists, psychiatrists, and counsellors near you.
