Time Missed: The First 15 Months of My Psychoanalysis

I finished my psychoanalysis in 1991. It took about six years. Psychoanalysis was hard work, and I always imagined that finishing would feel like graduation—a cause for celebrating. I certainly felt pride at having faced my darkest fears. At times I thought of analysis as a graduate degree in self-knowledge.

In some ways leaving T. (the first letter of my therapist’s last name) felt like when I left Memphis, my home town, and went a thousand miles northeast to college. I often said that ...