The Reluctant Exhibitionist

by Martin Shepard

  One of my psychoanalytic patients, at that time, was a young man who came to see me through the William Alanson White Institute’s low-cost clinic. In one session he commented admiringly that he had seen me on television talking about the need to oppose Lyndon Johnson in order to end the Vietnam war. When I reported this session to my supervisor, she suggested that I postpone my political involvement for several years. As she put it, “it’s not good for the transference if you have a public life.” Top that for myopia. I should fiddle while the world burns. Here is a supervising analyst at the White Institute telling me that it is more important for me to be publicly silent about the war (so that I could be the good blank screen that my patient could “transfer” his childhood feelings on to) than to work openly to end the slaughter. And she kept up this nagging advice for the several sessions I saw her.

  Rather than continue with this woman I transferred the case to another female supervisor. But here, too, my political involvement caused conflict. Rather than doctoring up the material presented to her (which seems to have been standard operating procedure for some students), I presented it as it was. Not from notes, but from tape recordings. Often, the telephone would ring during one of my sessions with a patient. It might be a call from a political group in California, Illinois, or New Hampshire. Or it might be a reporter, phoning for a story.

  Most analysts’ phones didn’t ring so frequently. Or if they did, the analyst could afford to let an answering service pick up for him. I couldn’t do that, for I was committed to stopping the war by promoting this revolution within the Democratic Party.

  I could see that such interruptions, brief as they might be, could upset the train of thought of my patients. Yet I also felt that my public commitment to life, to action, to nonviolence, also served a useful therapeutic purpose. For if I believed in something deeply, I acted upon it. And I expected my patients similarly to act on what they professed to believe.

  But this supervisor, too, was nonaccepting of my activities. She’d hear the phone calls interrupt the taped sessions. She’d read about my activities in the press.

  “I don’t think you really like being an analyst,” she once said. “You don’t seem sure of whether you want to be a therapist or a politician. I think you’ve got to choose one way or the other.”

  Try as I might, I could not convince her that I did indeed enjoy being a therapist but that the horror of this war required an equal commitment to work against it. Her advice to me was to “work it out by going back to your analyst,” and in the spring of 1968 she wrote a report to the Institute suggesting that I “resume analysis in the fall,” for, she believed, my “personal analytic experience can make a great deal of difference.”

  My decision to forget electoral politics as a way of ending the war was made, however, not by more “personal analysis” but by an assassin’s bullet. When Sirhan Sirhan discharged his weapon he ended all hope of silencing the guns of war in Vietnam for years to come. Why bother with politics when all it offered was a “choice” between a Richard Humphrey or a Hubert Nixon?

  I returned to psychiatry on a full-time basis in the fall of 1968 and undertook the second half of my supervisory experiences at the White Institute with two different supervisors. In addition, I immersed myself in the new wave of nonanalytic therapies.

  I studied marathon encounter techniques with Albert Ellis and found him to be a refreshingly honest and rational therapist. Anyone in his groups could ask him the most personal question and he would answer it without hesitation.

  “Dr. Ellis, have you been intimate with other women since living with your current girlfriend?”

  Ellis’ answer would be immediate, full, and complete. He told all there was to tell. He, too, would eventually pose the question, “Why do you ask?” to his questioner, just as an analyst might. But you knew that he wasn’t hiding behind his counter-question.

  Sitting in his group I saw how much more effective his responses were. People opened up much more readily. They were willing to share more of themselves as Ellis was willing to share himself. And secrets considered “shameful,” which might wait months before emerging on the analyst’s couch, would come out within hours.

  I studied with Bill Schutz, of Esalen Institute in California, when he and some group leaders he had trained came East in the winter of 1968. With him I came to appreciate nonverbal approaches as a means of gaining greater awareness of self. And the importance of risk-taking. And the very great value of having a person “act out” his fantasies in order to grow, change, and move on to other things, as opposed to incessantly talking them out.

  I worked with Fritz Perls, the great psychiatric genius of our time and the inventor of Gestalt Therapy. Fritz himself, born and educated in Europe, was trained and certified as a Freudian psychoanalyst. After fleeing the Nazis, he headed the South African Psychoanalytic Institute. Perls came to realize that there were three levels of “explanatoriness”—of talk. They were “chicken shit, bullshit and elephant shit.” He came to appreciate that most psychopathology was the result of not owning parts of yourself and, instead, projecting them outward. Instead of the spinster owning her heterosexuality, she sees all of the young girls in the neighborhood as trollops. Instead of the redneck accepting his softness, passivity, and affection for other men, he beats up other youths with long hair for being “faggots.” And, I suppose, instead of accepting their own boldness, their instinctive selves, classic psychoanalysts find people “acting out all over the place.”

  Fritz went on to develop a therapy that gave people an opportunity to re-own their projections, by having them act out parts and characters in their dreams and play the roles of people they felt were causing them difficulty.

  It was an exciting time for me. I was discovering therapies and therapists that I had never known existed. My training had made me aware of Freud and some of the neo-Freudians, of electro-shock and the chemotherapies, of decent environments and occupational therapies; but it had not prepared me for this. I soon realized that I, and the other “well-trained” Establishment analyst/therapists, were phenomenally ignorant. We were learning more and more about less and less, until, at the end of analytic schooling, we knew practically everything about absolutely nothing (“Can’t you wait until your training ends before involving yourself in this political thing?”).

  There was a whole world out there of other approaches to life, harmony, self-fulfillment, integrity, and health that the analytic Establishment knew nothing about. There was Yoga, mediation, Rolfing, Gestalt, sensory awareness, bio-energetics, nude therapy, rational-emotive therapy, Synanon. And just as I embarked on analytic training in order to become as good a therapist as I could be, I now studied all of these other approaches.

  Esalen, of course, was the center for the study of these varied approaches. What a marvelously experimental, open-minded place it was! They would try any approach if it seemed to further human understanding. But I was not prepared to re-locate in California.

  By the fall of 1969, I, Bob Kriegel (a former account executive at an advertising agency), Dave Schiffman, and Steve Gelman—none of them “professionals”—set up Anthos, a New York version of the openness that was Esalen. Here we could profit from these new approaches taught by visiting gurus and could pass on these methods to the public through group workshops that we ourselves would offer.

  The supervisors I had chosen for that last year and a half at the White Institute, Ralph Crowley and Harry Bone, were both very open-minded men, and both supported my search for new approaches. According to the bulletin of the William Alanson White Institute, the criteria for graduation include 200 hours of supervision. “All those who have worked closely with the students are consulted as to his readiness for graduation. Among the most important factors are supervision and advanced seminar reports.”

  Yet in January, 1970, I received a letter from Dr. X. stating her “regret” at having to inform me that the training committee “decided to drop you from furthe
r training at the White Institute since you have failed to meet the criteria for graduation. We will be pleased to meet with you to discuss any questions this may raise in your mind.”

  I couldn’t understand what criteria I had failed to meet, and so I phoned Dr. X. immediately to ask her that question. She told me that my work at the Institute had drawn serious criticism in the past.

  “But that was two years ago while I was involved politically. Since then I’ve only received two letters from the Institute’s training committee, both of which were favorable.”

  “People thought you had problems in your work with patients.”

  “Who?” I asked. “My last supervisors thought very well of me and supervised the last 96 of my 200 hours of supervision.”

  But the conversation was frustrating. She would raise some justification for the dismissal. I would counter her points. Yet with each refutation, she would raise another objection. Talking with her was like trying to lop off the heads of the Hydra. To paraphrase:

  Dr. X.: Ralph Crowley had some critical things to say.

  Marty: That’s the nature of supervisory reports. Yet he told me that he liked my work and even referred three patients to me. And Harry Bone thought likewise.

  Dr. X.: Well, Harry isn’t really doing analytic work anymore. He’s off in Canada working with Fritz Perls.

  Marty: If he’s not equipped to judge me as an analyst, why does the committee list him as a supervising analyst and why did you allow me to see him?

  Dr. X.: Well, we haven’t gotten his final report.

  Marty: That’s your responsibility, not mine. You supposedly consult closely with supervisors in order to judge fitness for graduation.

  Dr. X.: Why do you want a certificate, anyway? You’re not doing much psychoanalysis anymore.

  Marty: True, I’m not. But I’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money for the training, and I think I’ve demonstrated my competence in supervision to do psychoanalysis. Competence should be the basis of awarding diplomas, not that I practice only the analytic form of psychotherapy.

  Dr. X.: Well, if we graduate someone from the Institute we feel that his work reflects on us. Now, you’ve been pretty open about the things you’re doing. For instance, doing group workshops without pre-screening people. Often that can cause severe reactions.

  I countered by telling her that bad reactions can occur anywhere, even in an analyst’s office, and that none had yet occurred in my groups. She then criticized my leading nude groups:

  “Mind you, it’s not that I’m against that. But people will …”

  “Will what? Presume I’m leading orgies?” I told her that she could find out how I used nudity in a group setting by reading my second book, Marathon 16.

  Dr. X.: Look. Rather than go into this on the phone, why don’t you come in and talk to the training committee? Is there anyone you’d like to have come with you? As I see it, it boils down to our feeling that graduate analysts should be practicing analysts. And if you’re not doing that, a degree shouldn’t be given.

  Marty: Then I’d like to have the head of the student body attend the meeting so that the other students can hear this premise of yours, which I think is way off-base.

  Dr. X.: I don’t think you can bring a student. We don’t like to discuss one candidate in front of another.

  Marty: But I’m the candidate—or ex-candidate, I should say. And I waive my rights.

  Dr. X.: I’m sorry. That won’t be allowed. Is there anyone else you’d like to have accompany you?

  I suggested Drs. Crowley, Bone, and Anna Gourevitch, the only other person who had heard me present any clinical material in the past year and a half:

  “I’d like to put the question to them in front of the training committee as to whether or not I’m fit to graduate.”

  Dr. X. was to consult with Dr. Y. and call me back the next day.

  True to her word she phoned back; she informed me that I would not be allowed to have these supervisors attend the meeting. The committee felt it had all the information it needed.

  Marty: What the hell does the training committee base its opinions on, then? My supervised work or my publication of Games Analysts Play and unsubstantiated rumors about my practice or nakedness or whatever? What’s the purpose of the meeting? I had hoped to be able to convince the training committee that they were in error, or acted outrageously. For the past year and a half I received only two letters from the committee and both were favorable. My last two supervisors, who monitored half of my total number of hours, feel I’m competent. And now, a week after I finish all my work at the Institute and two weeks after Games Analysts Play is published, I, without any notice of probation or anything else to show my current performance was not considered satisfactory, am being dropped. No discussion, no reasons, no appeals, nothing. And when I ask for an open meeting, I’m told that no one is allowed to come in who might alter the committee’s mind. It’s like a kangaroo court. Is it a meeting geared to reopening things or merely telling me why I was dropped?

  Dr. X.: To tell you why we made the decision to drop you.

  It was Vietnam all over again, albeit on a far less destructive basis. Deceit in high places, the arrogant exercise of power, and a personal affront. I decided to take on the White Institute.

  On the night of my meeting with the training committee, I appeared accompanied by an attorney.

  “Who is this gentleman?” asked Dr. Y., chairing the training committee’s meeting.

  “My attorney, Mr. Stanley Faulkner. I brought him along to witness what you had to say to me because, following your letter and the phone conversation I had with Dr. X., I felt that I might well be being deprived of my civil rights.”

  That did it. Dr. Y. solemnly announced that I had been invited down alone “as a courtesy,” and that in view of my present action this meeting was adjourned. He further added that nobody had heretofore done anything of this sort.

  My attorney offered to leave so that the committee might speak to me alone. He then exited from the room.

  But no, Dr. Y. insisted upon gavelling the meeting closed.

  “You might well be ending the meeting, but I’ve got a few things I’d like to get off my chest while I’m here,” I told them.

  Dr. Y. then stood up and walked out, muttering something about how this confirmed their previous decision. (Meaning, of course, that if I had accepted their verdict that I was too “neurotic” to be an analyst, I would then be “healthy.” But if I intended to challenge their presumption—as I was doing now—then I was indeed “neurotic”)

  Strangely, however, Dr. Y.’s grand gesture fell flat. None of the others accompanied him as he left the room.

  I told the rest of the committee of my telephone conversation with Dr. X. As I talked, I noticed Dr. X.’s jaw making involuntary motions. When I got to the end of that story, she too stood up. Shaking her head from side to side and murmuring “lies, lies,” she began to leave.

  “If they’re lies, stick around and present your side of it,” I offered. But she ignored my request and left.

  I went on to tell the remaining members of the committee of their lack of common courtesy in dismissing me without a hearing, and of their blindness if they were, indeed, booting me out for practicing therapy that included, but went beyond, analytic technique.

  This was the most ironic cut of all. For the founding fathers of the William Alanson White Institute were all rebels themselves, rebels insofar as they refused to accept the rituals and arbitrariness of the Freudian American Psychoanalytic Association. At the time, the Freudians dogmatically insisted that “real analysis” could be conducted only if the patient came in five times a week, if the analyst remained aloof and detached, and if the Oedipus Complex* were used to explain most psycho-pathology. In addition, the Freudians insisted that only M.D.’s were fit to be analysts (this in spite of the fact that a great number of the early analysts in Freud’s inner circle never had M.D. degrees, or Ph.D.s in psy
chology, for that matter. All they had was the benefit of a brief psychoanalysis—an apprenticeship—with Freud himself).

  And so “unqualified” psychologists like Erich Fromm, maverick psychiatrists like Harry Stack Sullivan, and other people who allowed themselves more personal contacts with patients, who allowed their clients to sit in chairs, who felt free to be active agents of change instead of silent mirrors, established the White Institute as a place where differences of opinion and approach might be welcomed.

  Of course, the founding fathers had, by virtue of death or inactivity, long departed from the scene.

  “The White Institute was formed,” I went on, “because of the objections of Sullivan, Fromm, Clara Thompson, and others to the rigidity—the orthodoxy—of the Freudian analytic institutes. They preached room for diversity, and now you’ve set up your own orthodoxy.”

  They listened, said almost nothing, and I left.

  Shortly afterward I instituted a law suit to force the Institute to grant me my certificate or pay damages on account of the tens of thousands of dollars I had spent while studying there. Three hundred additional hours of a second, training psychoanalysis, and two hundred hours more of supervision of my analytic work—at $30 per hour—came to $15,000. Thousands more were spent for tuition. And the Institute was “thoughtful” enough not to dismiss me until I had paid for the full course of training.

  On the 26th of May, 1970, the Institute filed an answering affidavit to my legal challenge. It presented the court with nineteen pages (plus photostated documentary evidence—“Exhibits A through L”) of justification of my dismissal. It said that “Dr. Shepard was experiencing more than average trouble and difficulty with his work at the Institute” (page 4). It quoted some other analyst as saying that I displayed “morbid pathology” at a group seminar (page 12). It listed uncomplimentary reports about me from several other teachers. It devoted three pages (12, 13, and 14) to my involvement at Anthos, thus proving that I was, indeed doing nonanalytic work, and listed the Anthos brochure as “Exhibit K.” It claimed that I was not sufficiently interested in analytic work, was not committed to psychoanalysis as a person with an Institute certificate was supposed to be, and that they had considered dropping me as a student earlier, in 1968.