Psychologist, Bellevue Hospital, New York City
Faculty, New York University School of Medicine

Thank you for the opportunity to speak very briefly today about what I think is of central importance to psychologists in the United States.

As you know, citizens of the United States come from every country in the world. There are literally hundreds of languages spoken in our country. So, obviously, there is not one point of view about psychology. I can speak only as an individual.

I am a psychoanalyst, who works in the oldest public, charitable hospital in the United States. Our patients are the very poor; legal and illegal immigrants; and prisoners. You might ask yourself, do psychoanalysts in New York City really work with the poor, the immigrants, the prisoners? Isn’t psychoanalysis just for the rich?

In fact, in our hospital we do serve all these people.

Psychologists and psychiatrists at my hospital think that it is very important to work with each person as an individual. Each person is unique. Each person comes to the hospital with a particular, personal, history. Each person has been traumatized in a particular way. Each person is suffering in some particular way.

Sometimes Americans are criticized because we are too “individualistic,” as if egotism and individualism were the same thing. To value the individual, to help the individual achieve authenticity, to help the individual discover his truest, deepest, thoughts and feelings, is, for us, of great importance. As psychologists, we observe that many people cannot even know what they think and feel, unless they develop a relationship with someone, who can understand and accept them in a deep and healing way. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes about what it is like “to not know how to speak.” Then, he says, we communicate with “sighs and groans too deep for words.” Paul says this inarticulate pain is inspired by the Spirit. It is to this, the inarticulate pain of the individual, that psychologists are called to listen.  The word “psychology,” after all, means “speech of the soul”—psyche & logos.

There was a great psychoanalyst in America. His name was Hans Loewald. Dr. Loewald wrote, “Those who know ghosts tell us that they long to be released from their ghost life and laid to rest as ancestors. As ancestors, they become part of us. They are no longer compelled to haunt us with their shadow life.” In other words, if the traumatized individual is healed, he is no longer haunted by the painful ghosts of the past. Instead, he is enriched and strengthened by his history. He does not have to keep trying to forget the painful past. Instead, he can use his past, especially to understand others, who may still be haunted by their ghosts.

There are many examples of such healing in the Bible. I would like to end by reminding you of the story of Joseph, who, since he was an interpreter of dreams, was certainly a psychologist. As you know, Joseph was sold by his brothers and was made a slave in Egypt. You know the story—how he interpreted dreams and became great in Egypt. But first he was a slave. I think sometimes of how he must have suffered as an individual-- as a young boy, who lost his whole world, and who lived for so long as a slave. I do not know how he survived and overcame his suffering—there was some process of healing and of transformation. We remember him today as a specific individual with a specific history. We remember Joseph, not as a person submerged in a collective, but as a personality, as an individual. We remember him as someone who was able to transcend his suffering and to help many others. Joseph the individual had two specific children. I would like to remind you of their names.

Joseph named his first son, “Manasseh,” which means, “God has made me forget all my suffering.” Joseph named his second son, “Ephraim,” which means, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

This, I think, is what is central to the work of a psychologist in the United States today—there is the work of healing, so that suffering is transformed. It is not forgotten—it is remembered in a different way. Then there is the work of integration—the individual, who has experienced healing, becomes fruitful. The land of affliction becomes a land of blessing, for the individual and for the community.