"In the battle with our inner turmoil, we may fall repeatedly, but we continue to rise."
Emotions as the Core of Psychoanalytic Work
Year 4 of Psychoanalytic Training
During last year's New Year's gathering, when Rabbit asked about our psychoanalytic progress, I mentioned finally internalizing that "the therapist's stance is paramount," though this wasn't novel wisdom. Rabbit observed: "But experiencing it yourself makes all the difference."
Indeed it does.
Throughout 2023, I made incremental advances in my psychoanalytic journey: personal analysis and clinical work deepened; at Tavistock, I delved into Bion and other post-Kleinian theorists, gaining clearer insight into the distinctions between British and American traditions; the "Infant and Toddler" course at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) complemented this learning, allowing me to compare infant research across both traditions and deepen my understanding of early development; I continued academic writing with my mentor's guidance, submitting to the journal Psychoanalysis, Self and Context; and after careful consideration of various psychoanalytic institutes across Europe and America, I finally selected my psychoanalytic home, immersing myself in intersubjective and relational theories as I begin the journey of becoming an analyst.
Ultimately, this year's psychoanalytic growth distills to the oft-repeated yet profound truth: "emotions are the core of psychoanalytic work."
Recently, Professor Chen Gong's translation of "A Personal Odyssey Through Psychoanalysis and the Sense of Being" profoundly moved me with its articulation of therapeutic perspective. "Dear Candidate," a collection of wisdom from analysts worldwide to candidates, has been my constant companion throughout my application journey. I thought I might compile my annual insights in psychoanalytic work—if not to inspire others, then at least as a personal archive.
While writing, I discovered my senior colleague Xie Yi's published "From Fleeting Clouds to a Decade: A Counselor's 10-Year Reflections," with similar intentions—a meaningful synchronicity.
Origins
If last year I realized "the therapist's stance is paramount" through sustained self-supervision, then my deepened conviction that "emotions are the core of psychoanalytic work" stems from:
- Working with a supervisor specializing in trauma who consistently emphasizes emotional experience;
- Infant observation research, witnessing the subtle mother-infant emotional exchanges and infants' remarkable sensitivity to them;
- ICP's integration of contemporary empirical research;
- Insights from personal analysis and clinical practice.
Mental Development as Emotional Differentiation
In infancy, or when mental development remains incomplete, emotions exist in an undifferentiated state—we cannot name our feelings. Restlessness, for instance, represents an undifferentiated emotional state. Psychoanalysis provides a facilitative environment for mental development. Through analysis, we access a wider spectrum of emotional experiences. My previous column "Healing with Comfort" featured a series called "Nuances of Emotion." As our emotional experience becomes increasingly refined, our capacity for containment (thinking ability, mentalization, ego function) strengthens accordingly.
Whether in early development or as adults with unresolved injuries and incomplete psychic integration, we typically face fundamental challenges. We often cannot identify our emotional states, let alone self-regulate, process, or metabolize them. This lack of awareness leads to defensive operations and acting out, undermining relationships, development, and ultimately our life trajectory.
Emotions are Primarily Somatic
The self begins as a bodily self, and emotions are fundamentally somatic. Emotions are basic, foundational, unconscious. Often they exist beyond conscious awareness because the body speaks honestly, because emotional reactions precede cognitive processing, because we viscerally feel "butterflies in our stomach."
Because emotions are somatic, "understanding principles yet failing to live accordingly" remains common—emotions resist reflection, observation, distancing, and awareness of their fluid nature.
Because emotions are somatic, and the body represents our innate equipment that cannot be escaped, controlled, or transcended, "we create tools, and tools in turn shape our thinking" (McLuhan). Limited by our primary instrument "the body," emotions become concretized, even materialized—monsters we battle throughout life yet repeatedly fail to vanquish.
Trauma lives as somatic memory, with accompanying emotions locked within the body because they're too overwhelming to process. The past never truly becomes past, so we remain driven by it. Somatic memory functions like procedural memory (similarly unconscious)—like cycling, swimming, brushing teeth. Viewed this way, repeatedly falling for unattainable objects isn't so perplexing.
"I" become my own worst adversary, "I" combat "I," "I" undermine "I." Psychoanalysis offers an alternative pathway: perhaps "I" can also come to know "I," liberating the monster imprisoned within the body. Thus, one of its aims is to develop a "third ear," cultivating an "observing ego" to disrupt entrenched patterns (repetition compulsion).
Language as a Tool for Processing Emotions
As a "talking cure," mental development in psychoanalysis naturally progresses through language.
The body grounds language, and language shapes thinking. The body represents our primary, internal apparatus; language is the tool we necessarily employ to engage with the world.
We use language to think and express, transforming bodily impulses into symbols for understanding (mentalization) and communication (verbalization). This process itself constitutes self-knowledge, emotional containment, thinking (Bion), delayed gratification, and sublimation—one of psychoanalysis's fundamental mechanisms.
Emotions not verbalized remain unexperienced: if a language lacks terminology for a color, its speakers cannot visually discern that color; the same applies to emotions. Many interpersonal dynamics resist perception, acknowledgment, or articulation, creating profound "confusion of tongues" and "double binds," potentially leading to repression, dissociation, splitting, even generating a psychotic environment. This explains why "who parents are matters more than what they do." Consequently, in psychoanalysis, we engage in emotional discrimination and naming—fundamental tasks that carry inherent significance. We likewise strive to contain emotions, creating space for genuine choice.
Language itself harbors numerous limitations we must recognize.
Lacking adequate linguistic resources equals losing pathways to emotional recognition: limitations in emotional awareness may solidify as limitations in linguistic expression. "When names are incorrect, speech becomes unsound." "Names must be rectified." The power imbalances, moral judgments, and emotional manipulation embedded in East Asian languages may remain imperceptible without stepping outside their framework. (For trilingual counseling comparisons, see Ashi's "Know Me As Is.")
Expression Reveals Mental Patterns
Free association represents a cornerstone psychoanalytic technique because what emerges in expression precisely reveals mental patterns. Though free association actually represents a sophisticated capacity that many individuals only fully access in advanced stages of analysis.
Whether in structure: elaborate, detailed narratives, circuitous presentations, hesitations, or reluctance to speak; or content: logical coherence or confusion, not to mention "parapraxes"...
When one begins to express freely, that unfiltered state already reveals the mental model. The smallest unit of repetition compulsion is the thought. A momentary pause might already signify censorship.
Emotions play the decisive role beneath mental patterns. Distinguishing whether silence represents "resistance" or "progress" (perhaps both) likewise hinges on emotions.
Emotions Construct Cognition
Expression merely represents the "minimum viable prototype" of externalized emotion; cognition and thinking operate one level higher.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) works at this level, appearing insufficient to psychoanalytic practitioners because cognition ultimately derives from emotion. The process involves typically using cognition to "explain" emotions.
When anxious, we worry someone intends harm, thus rendering "anxiety" quite reasonable. Although the emotion itself remains unprocessed, our internal experience achieves coordination and consistency.
I once wrote "Obsessive thinking is not genuine thinking," because during overwhelming emotions or emptiness, we desperately employ rumination to fill internal space, with these thoughts serving solely to distance us from the emotions themselves.
This applies even in seemingly emotion-neutral domains: particularly in today's hyper-rational information-saturated society, when processing emotions, we often seek simplified knowledge from popular media. If this knowledge aligns with our emotions, we adopt it because it explains and rationalizes our feelings.
Similarly, mass media and information dissemination often amplify and reflect collective emotions, varying only in intensity.
Our cognitive systems typically develop through such processes. Without emotion-level processing, developing genuine critical thinking remains challenging.
Emotions Shape Personality
Body, language, expression, cognition—one level above lies personality. Indeed, personality structure and defense mechanisms form around emotions. This explains why psychoanalysis ultimately requires deep emotional understanding to work with various defensive configurations and personality structures. The core of psychoanalytic work is emotion.
What primarily shapes our existence are typically the most fundamental, primitive emotional states. "Family of origin theory," repeatedly critiqued yet enduring—I often suggest it doesn't reach far enough back. During life's first year, countless formative experiences occur; subsequently emerges the telescopic structure, layer upon layer. Our personality essentially organizes around how we manage fundamental emotions.
Without accessing fundamental emotions, perceiving their influence remains impossible, let alone transforming them. Psychoanalysis enables experiencing "unexperienced" emotions—therein lies its significance.
Society as Collective Emotional Expression
Clinical psychoanalysis rarely addresses extratherapeutic domains, but the Tavistock M16 Psychoanalytic Research program encourages broader exploration and integration. Moreover, psychoanalysis has long cross-fertilized with other disciplines as a framework for understanding human society. Here's a brief extension.
As noted earlier, mass media can be viewed as collective emotional expression; society similarly organizes around collective emotions, with various extreme emotional states crystallizing into symbols. How we experience and interpret these symbols occurs through individual intrapsychic refraction. Money, power, and other dominant social value symbols reflect universal narcissistic injury; excessive pursuit and reinforcement defend against underlying shame—ultimately circling back to emotions.
Final Thoughts
I frequently recall my American classmate Sam's observation:
"For severely traumatized individuals, the body itself becomes the enemy."
Emotions remain simultaneously crucial and challenging. Emotions introduce experiences of helplessness and uncontrollability, contradicting modern society's rationalistic ideals. Despite sophisticated rationality and technological advancement, our inability to master our bodies and emotions profoundly wounds contemporary humanity's narcissism.
Our profound fear of emotions drives constant avoidance—continually intellectualizing, relentlessly striving, repeatedly entering or fleeing relationships, careers, locations... inescapable remains oneself, the emotions perpetually present. Nothing feels adequate, nothing feels sufficient, because emotions continue exerting concrete influence.
Without engaging emotions, anything—even psychoanalysis—remains superficial. Precisely because emotions prove so challenging, sometimes even we therapists wish to escape; sometimes we cannot even recognize our own avoidance. Remaining present, engaging emotions—seemingly straightforward yet profoundly difficult. Perhaps the entire psychoanalytic training involves just this singular pursuit.
In the battle with our inner turmoil, we may fall repeatedly, but we continue to rise. We shall persevere next year.