Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Un-hiding the hidden

Thank you all for your responses to my psychoanalytic diaries. Making the decision to place them on-line was not an easy one, as you can well imagine. I had planned a manuscript summing up each year, including the month with the Vacation Analyst (that first year) and the six months with the Clean-up Analyst, as I call him, in the last year. But a summation manuscript is not the same thing as a diary; and since that’s the writing form I used during the analysis, for me it is the most authentic. Now the problem is time, of course.

There are thousands of entries, handwritten and typed. Some are on old DOS! disks, and I must pick and choose what to transcribe. But time’s moving and I knew I needed to get this done before old(er) age takes over - and especially since my husband is frail and I wanted to see us there in those old pages; so this summer I took the project on.

Whatever gets done will be it - though I'll work past summer; the rest I’ll donate to the university archives and hope other analysands will do the same with their analytic notes. One can stipulate “not to be opened for 50 years” if necessary and they can always be sanitized (names and places inked out).

Thanks again for your much appreciated support. It's good to un-hide what's been hidden, to get it out from underneath the desk or off an old floppy or out of the file cabinet. You've helped make my job easier. L'Chaim, to life! Esther

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Esther,
This is an inspirational work. I have shared your url with my daughter. "The Dream", "In the Hospital", and "Writing as Mother" especially spoke to my soul.
See you Thursday,
Barbara

Esther Altshul Helfgott said...

Thanks Barbara

"In the Hospital" is part of a poetry manuscript. I think you found it on my website.

Perhaps I should add it to Psychoanalytic Diaries, as well. Thanks for the idea and, as always, for visiting,

Esther