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The Impossible Profession—I | The New Yorker

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From 1980: Part 1 of Janet Malcolm’s Profile of a Manhattan therapist as he reflects on what Freudian therapy can—and cannot—achieve.

Save this story Save this story Illustration by Dadu Shin (This is the first part of a two-part article. Read the second part .) It almost looks as if analysis were the third of those “impossible” professions in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results. The other two, which have been known much longer, are education and government.— Sigmund Freud: “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937). As psychoanalysts, we are only too aware that our profession is not only impossible but also extremely difficult.— Adam Limentani: International Journal of Psycho-Analysis (1977

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