Is Talking About The Past Vital To Healing?
Gabrielle Silver, MD
Gabrielle Silver is an Instructor at New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, Payne Whitney. From 2006-2014 she worked as Director of the Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation Liaison Service, where she developed the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium (CAPD), a screening tool for nurses to detect delirium. She has continued her research with the Delirium Work Group at Cornell publishing, most recently, C Traube, G Silver, L Gerber, S Kaur, E Maur, A Kerson, C Joyce, B Greenwald. Delirium and Mortality in Critically Ill Children: Epidemiology and Outcomes of Pediatric Delirium Mar 2017 · Critical Care MedicineShe is currently a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Candidate at NYPSI.
In psychoanalysis, the ability to discuss what is happening in the here and now, and recognize how this relates to life-long patterns is central to the process of understanding the mind, the Self and the complex motivations that interweave in one’s daily life. Psychoanalysis seeks to deepen one’s understanding of how the subjective present is influenced by one’s past. Through this exploration we come to recognize how memories and understandings are influenced in turn by the subjective present. Ultimately this unfurling of current thoughts and experiences in light of past thoughts and experiences allows for a deeper understanding of oneself. Exploring the past along with the present creates the opportunity for a kind of reweaving process so that over the course of the treatment there is growth and development of the self. This includes changes in understanding and deep internalized changes such that one builds resilience, compassion for oneself and for those who have touched our lives, as well as greater capacity for self-regulation. What follows is a greater capacity to feel and act in ways that are consistent with one’s desires and ethics. This is vital to a deeper kind of healing. If immediate relief is being sought for a circumscribed symptom, more limited therapies may be indicated; however, if a person’s troubles are of a long-term and more pervasive nature, psychoanalysis is going to provide the best result.