Neil: Well, I’m glad that we’re finally doing this. It’s been many months since we last sat down to record a podcast.
Isolda: Yes. I was missing it and everything.
Neil: Yeah, me too. That’s how I felt. I was like, I want to do one of these again.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk about our topic for today. The last time we were speaking and we got to the part of the podcast where we talk about what we’ll discuss next, you suggested that we speak about psychoanalysis as an experience.
Isolda: Oh, shit, I did that.
Neil: You did. And I’ve been thinking about it since that suggestion. Here’s where my thoughts have taken me.
I’ve heard many times from many different people that psychoanalysis is something people come to because they read about it—maybe in university. Not everyone, but many people discover it that way. They read Freud. They read Lacan. Maybe they read others outside the Lacanian orientation—Winnicott, Fairbairn, Klein, and so on. And they learn things. Reading psychoanalytic theory can absolutely teach you things.
But to really understand what psychoanalysis is as a clinical experience—as something lived, as an analysand—you have to go and present yourself as an analysand. There’s simply no way around that.
You cannot have the same kind of experience if you only engage with psychoanalytic thought through texts, podcasts, or YouTube videos. I don’t want to disparage those forms—I think they can be very useful, and people can learn a lot from them. But there’s something particular about the experience of being an analysand that you can only get by actually being one.
That was my starting thought. I wanted to kick it over to you and ask what you think—whether you’d add to that, modify it, or respond in any way.
Isolda: I agree with you in the sense that, usually—though not always—people become connected to psychoanalysis because of university or intellectual study. Even if they’re not in the mental health field, psychoanalysis is something many people encounter through intellectual exercise.
You can read a philosophical system. You can read anthropology. And you can read psychoanalysis. It’s interesting. But what you’re putting on the table fascinates me because psychoanalysis as an experience is completely different from psychoanalysis as an intellectual exercise.
I’m not saying reading isn’t useful. It is. But it’s different. Reading psychoanalysis doesn’t make you an analysand. It’s not about extracting knowledge from a textbook. If there were a “textbook” in psychoanalysis, it would be your own body—your lived experience when you occupy the position of analysand. And that’s a choice. Not everyone has to do it. It’s not for everybody.
Of course we study. We read. We have to. But the kind of knowledge that comes from choosing an analyst and speaking about yourself—going through that experience—is completely different from intellectual study.
It’s not just what you read. It’s what you feel. It’s how you create distance from things you believed until that moment. It’s how your body is affected. It’s not the same—even though you can get nervous reading a text. What you do in analysis is try to read yourself: your symptoms, your repetitions, your impasses, what is impossible or unbearable for you. And you do that from a position of not knowing—from sustaining an open question.
And the unconscious—people study it as a concept. But in my humble experience, the unconscious is an experience itself.
When you want to say something and you end up saying something else. When you feel something in your body that doesn’t align with what you think. That’s the part I want to highlight in this episode. Because if we don’t go to the experience, it’s hard to sustain the idea of singularity. Textbooks are universal. Anyone can read them. But how that text affects your body—that’s singular.
Neil: That aligns with what I was saying.
As you were speaking, a lot came to mind. I’ll try to present it coherently.
I came to psychoanalysis through reading. I didn’t start by going to an analyst because of a symptom. I was a graduate student reading Freud. I was captivated. I would read things, think things, feel things. It was a unique subjective experience.
It started something in me. But it could only take me so far.
Reading can open a person up to the idea of the unconscious. It can make someone curious: “I have symptoms. What’s going on? Why is this satisfying?” It can start that process.
But to go further, I had to present myself to another speaking body and say things out loud.
There is something about saying something out loud to another person that is completely different—and more powerful—than saying it only in your own thoughts or writing it privately. The words could be identical, but speaking them to another who can hear and respond changes everything. It opens a possibility that only exists in that relational space.
I also talked to friends. We had interesting conversations. But their responses were not the same as those of someone who had undergone psychoanalysis themselves.
A psychoanalyst responds from having been an analysand. That makes a difference.
Also, the analyst has no vested interest in what I choose to do. If I describe a dilemma—whether to leave a relationship, quit a job, confront a parent—the analyst has no investment in the outcome. Friends and family often do. They might steer you.
The analyst doesn’t steer. They encourage curiosity about what you want and why.
That’s what makes it different.
Isolda: My experience was different. I went to analysis first. After two years, I started reading Lacan. Freud was everywhere in my university, so that wasn’t strange. But I entered through experience first.
And what you said about speaking to someone—you’re not speaking to someone whose personal history you know. It’s not a friend or family member. There’s no mutual affection in the same way.
But I think something else happens: you begin listening to yourself differently.
It’s not just that the analyst listens differently. It’s that you start listening differently.
When we talk to friends, often they give advice. In psychoanalysis, there’s orientation, perhaps highlighting contradictions, but not advice.
Because the analyst isn’t invested in your life in that way, they’re interested in disentangling what causes your suffering.
And the experience changes how you relate—to people you love, to knowledge, to politics, to yourself.
Analysis allows you to create distance from yourself. Not in a dissociative way—but experientially. Your body feels it when you step back and question something.
Neil: Yes.
When someone begins analysis with someone who has undergone analytic formation, they encounter someone who is genuinely interested—curious about their speech. But without trying to fix, cure, or push them toward “good choices.”
That absence of coercion is powerful.
You realize how much choice you have. You can return next session and speak about anything. You can drop something or return to it.
Over time, the transference shifts. I once thought the analyst was something entirely different from the analysand. Now I think the analyst is a particular kind of analysand—still an analysand.
Isolda: That connects to how you listen to your body differently.
Some patients say they start getting “sick” more often—but really, they are just reading their bodies differently.
They differentiate anguish from sadness, anger, anxiety. They realize they didn’t know what they were feeling.
You begin to establish a new relationship to your own speech. You might say, “Did I really say that?” It’s not about thinking before speaking. It’s about relating differently to what you say.
Psychoanalysis opens the dimension of fracture: you say one thing, do another, feel something else. That fracture becomes livable.
Neil: Let me share an example.
I took my kids to a pumpkin patch. I expected it to be wonderful. I was excited.
But once there, I was miserable. I hated it. I was scanning for everything that could go wrong, trying to get ahead of chaos.
Then I asked myself: Why am I not having a good time?
I realized I was operating under the assumption that something would go wrong, and I had to prevent it. That pattern connected to earlier life experiences.
I brought this into analysis. I made the associations. The analyst punctuated moments. That allowed something to shift.
What changed is that I can now be curious about myself outside the session. I can be interested in my own reactions in ways I couldn’t before.
That’s one of the ways I’m different because of the experience.
Isolda: That example shows how sustaining a question opens possibilities.
The price is tolerating emptiness—not abyss, but not knowing.
We invent new ways of relating to ourselves.
And transference—beyond being a concept—is an experience. It touches the body. You feel things. It’s supported by the unconscious.
Neil: I see similarities between psychoanalysis and 12-step recovery. In both, there’s suffering rooted in certainty—knowing.
Transformation happens when someone moves from certainty to uncertainty, and that uncertainty becomes usable rather than threatening.
In psychoanalysis, one divests from the satisfaction of knowing and opens to desire—which involves lack.
Isolda: The difference is the unconscious.
In psychoanalysis, the uncertainty is linked to that glitch in the system—the unconscious.
Neil: That might be our next episode: transference.
Isolda: Yes.
Neil: I want to ask next time: Is it hard to be a psychoanalyst?
I used to think yes. Now I don’t.
And I think that connects to transference.
Isolda: I love it. Let’s leave it there.
Neil: Thank you to everyone who listened. We hope you’ll join us next time.