Two Ways of Seeing an Analyst
"I’m training in psychoanalysis."
When I introduce myself to people like this, it’s as if the word psychoanalysis I’ve just spoken suddenly shifts the conversation into a place of serious analysis. After the polite response—“Oh, you’re studying something meaningful”—people usually show one of two emotional reactions.
The first is a defensive posture: “So... are you analyzing me right now?”
As if they’re afraid I might already be seeing something they themselves can’t. In that moment, although I hadn’t been thinking much at all, I often find myself cast as an outsider—someone to be wary of. On the other hand, once we grow a bit closer, those same people tend to show curiosity, hoping I’ll offer some clever insight about them. They suggest we meet so I can give them relationship advice or interpret their family history. This reaction is what I’d call a “universal response to analysts”—one that most psychoanalysts I’ve met, both in Korea and abroad, agree transcends culture.
The second reaction is even more prominent in Korea. With a vague tone, they ask, “What made you study psychoanalysis?”—driven by curiosity, almost expecting that I must have overcome some major trauma to become a psychoanalyst. They assume I carry a deep wound, and they want to bring it up. But there’s no such dramatic story… Should I make one up? The real reason I pursued this field is far too mild to satisfy that expectation. If I don’t provide the answer they’re hoping for, they try to be kind, saying, “Oh, if it’s hard to talk about now, you can tell me once we’re closer.” I suspect even my awkward expression at that moment becomes, for them, evidence of some enormous hidden wound. They treat me as if I live with a psychological disability and that I’m a kind of living proof of mental triumph through psychoanalysis—like Nick Vujicic, who was born without limbs and inspires hope simply by standing up.
I think these reactions capture something essential about the nature of psychoanalysis itself. It can be summed up in one phrase: the exploration of the unconscious. Approaching the unconscious triggers fear in everyone. People become guarded when they hear an academic term that knocks on the door of their unconscious. They tighten the locks around their hearts, pushing away the vague anxiety as if it belongs to someone else.
Just as we stash letters from ex-lovers in a deep drawer because we don’t want to see or think about them every day, we place in the unconscious the thoughts and feelings we can’t fully claim as our own. This is a powerful defense system—like how the best way to lie is to believe your own lie. We tuck away our genuine thoughts and emotions into the drawer of the unconscious and consciously think they don’t exist. In doing so, we create distance from the raw, tangled emotions tied to what’s hidden there. Inevitably, the discipline of psychoanalysis confronts people with stories of themselves they’ve worked hard to ignore—stories they've tightly locked away. That’s why psychoanalysis is often misunderstood as something frightening or unsettling. Analysts become the target of caution or projection, reflecting a person’s inner anxiety. The unconscious becomes like a warrior that has dared to approach a forbidden space.
But that, too, is merely each person’s own standard. Just as not everything we keep tucked away in a drawer is less valuable or harmful to us, the process of psychoanalysis can be seen as a way of facing and integrating the sparkling fragments of the self we’ve hidden. In many ways, psychoanalysis is the process of uncovering and reintegrating the brilliant, vital parts of ourselves that we’ve hidden away. I think that’s truly beautiful. I struggle to put this beauty into words. When I think of the many fragments I encounter each day through psychoanalysis, I feel both thrilled and frustrated—my heart races faster than my words can keep up.
In that sense, the psychoanalysis I’ve experienced is neither a secret mystery nor a wounded triumph. It’s a comprehensive artistic process—my own. It’s a romantic collaboration with the analyst to gather all the scattered pieces of myself, both conscious and unconscious, and become a more whole version of who I am.
I want to write about the beauty of this discipline—beyond the misunderstandings that often surround psychoanalysis.