Queer Dead Uncles

Interpretation emerges belatedly. The sessions themselves, and the pauses between them, are filled with little tools that might eventually amount to an interpretative scaffolding: descriptions (of events), articulations (of feelings), and unexpected associations (between events and feelings). Sometimes I cheat and come up with connections before the session begins so that I am a bit more armed when it does. If I remember a dream and write it down, I feel less naked for analysis, too. Ready to offer the analyst something that isn’t just silence, from which anything can emerge. So many decades into analysis (I began as a teenager), I may still not be ready for this “anything” that can emerge. I may rehearse the topic ahead of time, but when the session starts, all bets are off. Perhaps “anything” won’t emerge, but certainly something that wasn’t accounted for.