The Omnipotence of the Psychoanalyst

Thoughts on the Need to Consider Retirement

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8335576
AutoresMartin L Nass (autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen63
Número5
Páginas1013-1023
Fecha de publicación2015-10-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-0651 • E-ISSN: 1941-2460
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0003065115609445
PMID26487117
OpenAlexW2298604510
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas13

T he issue of retirement in the psychoanalytic profession is a rather delicate and usually unspoken matter. In fact, a recent paper by Norman Clemens (2011a) is titled “A Psychiatrist Retires: An Oxymoron?” On many occasions nonpsychoanalytic colleagues and friends have asked about my own plans for retirement, but I cannot think of one instance when a psychoanalytic colleague asked me when I was planning to retire. It is a question that had never occurred to me until rather recently. I had thought that my practice would eventually close through attrition. In fact, over the past several years I was working only twenty to twenty-five treatment hours a week. I had stopped accepting new analytic patients about fifteen years ago, except for some time-limited reanalyses, and was still working with some long-term analytic patients and several psychotherapy patients, as well as a few candidates and graduates in supervision. Finally, though, a series of noncatastrophic personal and family medical problems made me realize that it was time to formally end my psychoanalytic practice of fifty years. Analysts apparently plan to keep working until they are no longer able to function—and here lies the major problem. There are isolated stories of their continuing to work past the age of one hundred. More frequent are stories of elderly analysts or supervisors falling asleep, forgetting important material about the patient, and keeping the focus of these errors on the patient. Confrontation by the 609445 APAXXX10.1177/0003065115609445Book essayOn the Need to Consider Retirement research-article2015

Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Forgetting · Omnipotence · Oxymoron · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications