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“Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none is more wonderful than man …” –Sophocles
Nothing interests me more than human beings and they have to live somewhere. My first career was as an Anthropologist, followed by training as an actor, followed by a 45 year career as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. Each of these disciplines is the study of people and what they are thinking, feeling and doing.
It was my good fortune to have been the wife of an American Foreign Service Officer in the early 1960s, when wives of diplomats were forbidden to have a career. This enabled me spend nearly a decade as a traveler and explorer.
In December, 2015, I retired as a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Although I left behind my clinical practice, I am taking with me my “analytic attitude,” which is a way of being in the world.
My approach to visiting a new place is similar to how I would greet a new patient, “without memory or desire” as Freud instructed, meaning having no preconceived notions about who or what is about to appear. Just show up somewhere and let the destination tell you about itself.