Institute for Expressive Analysis of N.Y.

Psychoanalytic Expressions:
A Journal of Art and Words.

All of our writers and artists are members of the IEA community.

The following is a speech written by Dr. Joel Gold, Ph.D., former director of IEA, and presented at an IEA conference. A very big dog named Broodje helped Dr. Gold give this presentation.

I would like to introduce my friend here. This is Broodje. Broodje's official name is Gijsbreacht von Amstel, which is a very popular name for horses in Holland and gives Dutch and Flemish people a great laugh when they meet Broodje because it is a horse's name and Broodje is a bit big. Which brings us back to the story of who Gijsbrecht von Amstel really is. He tried to sell Holland to Belgium back in the 14th century but the Dutch caught him in the act and he was sent home where he started up the Amstel brewery - not a bad punishment and a pretty good beer.

Now Broodje is a Bouvier des Flandres. Bouvier, as in Jackie O., comes from the old Latin word for cows, BOVINE . And des flandres translates as (from Flandres) which is the northeast part of France and the lands known today as Holland and Belgium. Bouviers are cow-herding dogs who use their heads under the cow's chin to get them to where they are going. They are also famous for pulling milk carts from the farms to the towns. Currently they are used as service dogs for the blind and do police work in Belgium, France, and Holland.

Now Bouviers have something in common with Jews. Hitler hated both the Jews and the Bouviers. It turns out that a Bouvier bit Hitler when he was a soldier during the First World War. Does anyone question the intelligence of this breed? During the Great War, Bouviers were used to deliver messages behind enemy lines and were assigned to transporting the wounded in the milk carts they normally pulled during peacetime. The Bouviers were also used for mine detection and as guard dogs.

Hitler's very first decree upon entering Holland and Belgium called for the destruction of the Bouviers des Flandres. His second decree concerned the Jews. Astonishingly, ... enough of the breed was taken into hiding, during the war, which saved the Bouviers from complete extinction. Their fate was not unlike that of the Jews of these countries. The fact that people were willing to risk their own lives to save dogs is a testimony to the capacity to survive and the endurance of affection between people and animals. The human-animal bond.

Today, I am going to talk about the human-animal bond: I believe the human animal bond offers a unique emotional communication and I am going to talk about it in a variety of ways. I am going to tell you a bit about:
(1) my practice and about my dogs and the Freud's and their dogs and
(2) about psychoanalysis and the human-animal bond and
(3) a bit about Darwin and some thoughts about the emotions of animals and then
(4) some of our stereotypes about the human-animal bond and
(5) the Human-animal bond for therapists 101. And, finally, I would like to hear about your emotional experiences having to do with this human-animal bond. I am pleased to have the opportunity to do this presentation at IEA I can think of a lot of places where this would not be acceptable.

Nevertheless, Here I am the Director of the Institute for Expressive Analysis having anxiety attacks worrying if I am presenting ideas about animals and particularly about dogs and psychotherapy that I have thought about for many years. I fear people will say "Who is this guy and what is he doing present this stuff today?" Well, IEA is an institute dedicated to bringing creativity and uniqueness to the psychoanalytic process. We have many students and faculty who have incorporated dance, art, drama, and music into their analytic work with patients. So why not a view of the human-animal bond (from a psychoanalytic perspective) and what having various dogs in my office has been like.

Let me tell you a story here. Way back when I was just starting my practice, I was visiting friends who had a loft in an industrial section of Brooklyn. It was a freezing cold day and I was returning to my car and saw a little black ball of fur in front of one of the tires. I looked down and realized it was a little dog barely breathing and shivering with cold. It was obviously dumped out onto this secluded street. I picked it up, it was barely able to move I took it in the car and tucked him inside my coat. I got the poor dog home and opened the fridge to give him some warm milk and a few pieces of cheese. It was starving and no sooner did it start to warm up a bit than it started humping the refrigerator so I named him Humphrey. Now, you know, once you gave an animal a name it is yours. So, the next day I took him to the vet who said he was indeed in very bad shape and that it would be a miracle if he survives. Humphrey, who was something of a poodle/terrier mix, would have to be medicated hourly. There was no way I could leave Humphrey home and attend to him so I took him to the office. So having a little dog in the office was a serendipitous event.

Let me tell you about one little boy and Humphrey. I believe the human-animal bond presents a unique emotional communication because it is precisely in the non verbalness of the communication that something happens. In this case -- something healing. Trying to recall what it has meant to have different dogs in the office over many years brought back many memories of kids and dogs. The interaction between kids and dogs can be one of the most rewarding experiences there is. One little boy who had a mother who didn't want him - found love with Humphrey. His mother thought her son was slow, learning disabled, unable to finish sentences, and he stuttered. In no way was he the child of her phantasies nor was she willing to look at herself in therapy. Her son was the identified-patient and she thought, perhaps, at best, I could patch him up. I remember him as one of the saddest little boys I ever meet. Frankly, if she were my mother I would have been in much worse shape than this little boy. He was short for his six years and a little on the heavy side. He had very very sad dark eyes and a very small voice. He liked me but nevertheless I was an adult not to be trusted, potentially capable of inconsistent responses, and potentially capable of loud verbally abusive tirades. He fell in love with Humphrey who in turn adored him from day one. Humphrey would lean against him with all his weight and you could hear the both of them sigh. Sometimes he would lie on Humphrey's back and sometimes he would lie on his side and Humphrey would put his head on the boys chest or on his shoulder. Sometimes they would fall asleep together. The boy would talk to Humphrey in a very low voice -- a voice I could not make out the words -- not that it mattered - - - I might as well have been a stick of furniture. It was very clear to me that I should remain quiet. It was also clear that there was healing taking place and I just sat and felt a very quiet breathing within myself. There were sessions in which he would nap on the floor with Humphrey's head resting on his face or across his chest. Once, I heard him say in a very little whisper "I wish you were my mother."

The little boy was improving, his schoolwork was better, he was not so scattered verbally and he had more energy and he lost some weight. He relished him time with Humphrey and was beginning to include me in the interaction. His eyes had a new brightness and he looked less sad. His mother, on the other hand, fearing the loss of the identified patient she had created and the dissolution of her externalized bad-self, stepped up her harassment of the boy - finding new complaints about him... until, one day, she came in triumphantly announcing that her son had been diagnosed with epilepsy and that accounted for all his problems... he no longer needed therapy he needed medication. I think it was one of the most heart breaking days of my life. My only wish is that some where in that little boys psyche is a remembrance of feeling exquisitely understood by the silence of his perfect relationship with a little dog.

Another patient I call (the case of the weeping woman ) came into treatment. She could barely tell me much about herself except that she knew she wanted treatment. In her first sessions she was very quiet and had great reluctance to make eye contact with me. The idea of suggesting she use the couch came to me. No sooner did she try the couch than Humphrey came up and joined her - lying next to her with his head facing her head. Very slowly she put her hand on his head and began to silently cry till the end of the session. In the next session she was again joined by Humphrey on the couch and began to silently cry and this time I asked her how she would like me to be. She replied that she would like me to say nothing. And so for nearly one year this woman would come to her session, lie on the couch, be joined by Humphrey and cry silently. She would pay for each session and leave. Only after about a year was she able to begin to talk to me, describing a brutal father who chased her around the kitchen table with knives while her passive and depressed mother watched unable to help her daughter.

For this woman Humphrey offered her the connection she needed to have between the complete isolation she had been living in and a communication with another living being. This was a woman who knew she needed therapy and yet was not ready to trust another person. Not unlike the little boy and Humphrey she too needed a holding environment before she could tolerate an object relationship with another person. It was toward the end of her work with me that she said she could have never stayed in therapy but for her time with Humphrey and my respecting that relationship. She went on to have a successful career and a fulfilling life.

Over the years there were a number of dogs in the office. After Humphrey there was Amos, a nine-year old retired seeing eye dog. Everyone loved Amos, a yellow Labrador retriever. The old woman Amos guided had dies, she must have love beer because anytime Amos and I passed a bar he would pull me inside. He loved Budweiser. Amos, like Humphrey and all the dogs I have had instinctively knew what patients needed. I do not believe any of them were ever wrong. And interestingly all of them reacted to patients differently than they behaved at home. They were more reserved with patients, not jumping and almost never barking during office hours. Behaviors, believe me that were quite different at home. Patients would be on the couch or in a chair and touch various parts of the dog. The heart, the feet, the ears. Was there something not being attended to within their own heart or were they not taking the steps they needed to take or not being heard as they should be. I would often note the location of the touching and wonder out loud if there was a connection. Almost invariably there was.

As Amos got older I got Troll, also a yellow Labrador retriever. Troll, a puppy, connected with Amos in a very deep way always taking his lead from him. When Amos died Troll would not eat and the vet said he would not make it unless I got another dog. So, Troll and I went to visit Tess up in Westchester a Bouvier des Flandres up for adoption. Her owners were moving to an assisted living residence where dogs were not accepted - more on that later. Troll connected with Tess and we all went home. (school bus) PAUSE In the office, Troll was great as spotting a paranoid personality often before it became obvious to me. . He would walk backwards from the door to the consultation room, maintaining a barely audible growl until he would get under my desk and then go into silence and remain under the desk until the person left. I have a few theories about this but Troll is the only dog that did this kind of diagnosis. Tess, on the other hand, would pass wind in group therapy whenever she thought someone was getting too angry. Not that her flatulence was not noticeable at other times She didn't fart other times but she consistently farted. Tess and Troll died within months of each other. Troll from lymphoma and Tess from Cushings Disease (cancer of the pituitary). With the loss of two dogs in such a short time many patients, either missing or not missing the dogs, got in touch with the unfinished mourning of losses in their own lives. It was a very powerful experience for me to be feeling and to see the effects of loss, grief, and mourning throughout my practice. Sometime later when being without a dog felt too empty and unbearable, I acquired Elodie another Bouvier And some time later another yellow Lab, Fergus. Elodie had two liters of pups from her matings with Buster a huge and handsome Bouvier. (TURN TO BROODJE) (Your Father!). From Each liter I kept one pup Charlotte and Broodje and very glad I did because Elodie also died young of Lymphoma. I am not suggesting that all of you run out and get an animal to bring into your practice. But I am suggesting the Human animal bond repeat etc.

These days, with all we know about therapy dogs and other animals visiting hospitals and comforting ill patients, trauma victims and the elderly perhaps what I am describing does not sound like such a big deal. But when people first heard I had a dog in the office there were a lot of things being said to me and about me. "He doesn't know what Hess doing..." "One day that dog will bite someone and then what?" "Does he know what he is doing to the transference?" "Who ever heard of having a dog in the office?" It was only years later that I heard of other therapists having closet pets in their sessions. And it was Marie Coleman Nelson, one of the very early NPAP people, told me, some years after Humphrey, that she had boxers in her office, and she reassured me that it was a lot of nonsense about the transference. She said, "If you know what you are doing, the transference will hit you over the head, no matter what."

So let me take you back to the early years of my practice. One summer, shortly after Humphrey settled in, I left him with friends for a few weeks and took a vacation. I was in London and the thought hit me, why not visit Anna Freud and get the scoop on Freud and his dogs.

My Visit To The Freud House

I had heard that Freud liked dogs and one day in the early seventies I was in London and decided to go visit Anna Freud and ask her about their dogs. I went to one of the big booksellers to purchase one of her books to have her autograph. the only one in Stock was Normality and Pathology in Childhood and that seemed as good a choice as any. I think I just wanted to find out more about her father. So off to Hampstead and the Freud residence I went book in bag. I arrived at the front door to the Freud residence and rang the bell. I woman answered and I introduced myself. Hi, I'm Joel Gold I am a student at the national psychological association for psychoanalysis in NY and I wondered if Ms. Freud is at home and if she would autograph a copy of her book. The woman smiled gently and asked me to wait a moment as she very gently closed the door in my face.

In about 43 seconds two policemen were rushing me and another 10 0r 12 bobbies were standing near by and as many men in business suits obviously plain clothesmen were surrounding the place. Just about the time they were grabbing me I thought - I-rish... ter-ror ists... boooook... bombszz and here I am casually stopping by the Freud's house asking for a book to be autographed in the height of the Book bombing attacks that were going on in London and throughout the UK.

It's amazing how insight can rush to the forefront just as you are realizing you have done something completely idiotic...as they picked me up off the ground and carried me to the street where they searched me. Once the authorities realized I was completely harmless albeit a little dumb - they apologized (as only the British would) and released me. The woman who had previously opened the door to the Freud house reappeared at the front door and introduced herself as Paula Ficthl the Freud's trustworthy housekeeper who left Vienna with them so many years before when they were fleeing from the Nazis.

Ms. Fichtl apologized profusely saying one cannot be too careful these days and informed me that Ms. Freud was on holidays in Scotland. Then she asked if I would like to come in and see the Professor's study. I thought I was going to faint from excitement. I asked her about the dogs in the Freud household and I told her about Humphrey. Paula Fichtl offered me a cup of tea and with old world Viennese charm, told me Freud truly loved dogs. The first dog the Freud's had belonged to Anna.

Wulfi was an Alsatian (now better known as a German Shepherd). She said The Professor and Anna had a very strong connection to that dog and loved Wulfi very much. By the way, Wulfi was acquired shortly after Anna had broken off an engagement to be married.

Frau Freud, meaning Freud's wife, Martha, did not care much for dogs and would be angry with the Professor if he fed Wulfi from the table which he often did. Anna and her father's love of dogs may certainly have contributed to Sigmund's and later Anna's position that our relationships with dogs are substitutes or replacements for human relationships. . Wulfi was Anna's dog and it was their love of dogs that gave Anna and her father another dimension to their bond.

Freud had Chows, dogs who in fact as a breed are not famous for their gentle, sweet dispositions. Paula Fichtl spoke of Freud's chow chow, Yo-Fie attending all of Freud's sessions for seven years when it died of heart failure after a surgery. Yo-Fie was followed by Lun-Yug, another chow chow. It was Ernst Jones, Freud's biographer, who reported Freud had a genuine sense that he and his dogs shared an intimate mutual understanding, a belonging together free of ambivalence. I don't know if Jones reported this before or after Freud's chow bit Jones on the butt. What is reported was that Freud did mention he liked dogs because they did not suffer from ambivalence. I would like to mention that Gary Genosko's writings on Freud have been very helpful in formulating this paper. Freud has written about dogs being, for him, substitutes for more children as he became older and for the loss of one of his grandchildren. He used dogs in many of his analogies about psychoanalytic points he was making. He used animals in naming some of his most important cases, The Rat Man and The Wolf Man. There is some evidence that Freud's Wolf Man may have had his life more complicated by passing through the Freud household and encountering Anna's German shepherd Wulfi. The analyst, Ruth Brunswick reports that the famous wolf dream reported to her by the wolf-man describes gray wolves more like Anna's dog Wulfi, than the white wolves indigenous to his native Russia.

Freud has also written his famous case of Little Hans about phobic animals. In this case it was a horse (approached with both fear and interest). In speaking of children's animal phobias Freud regarded the larger domestic animals for male children as substitutes for the father. If you haven't had the opportunity to read Freud's case of Little Hans it is very worthwhile. Freud was very aware of the many roles of animals in the unconscious. He saw animals as playing vitals roles in the psychosexual development of children and in the totemism of primitive peoples in relation to the development of mankind and in the development of human consciousness.

Freud was seeing substitutions in what his animals meant to him in his personal life. In his psychoanalytic writings he describes animals as substitutes for the father in oedipal developmental issues and in the totemism found in our phylogenic and ontological development as humans. Freud's animals are certainly not alien to his thinking the unconscious incorporates the Human-animal bond. Nevertheless, Freud's references to animals as substitutes has had the effect of pathologizing whether he meant it or not. However analytic theory does not address the emotional complexity of the human-animal bond. My professional experience has validated the bond that Freud identifies for us, but I have seen much more of the power of this bond in my work.

I would like all of you today to walk away understanding that the human animal bond teaches us an important connection to our emotions and is much more than the traditional analytic view that our pet relationships are a substitute for other relationships.

There is a real void in examining the possible causes and functions of pet keeping and the human-animal bond -except perhaps as a symptom of prejudice James Serpell, a British researcher in biology and zoology, who has dedicated much of his research to the study of the human--animal relationship points out that although there are many theories and preconceived ideas about why we have pets most of these views tend in one way or another to denigrate pet-keeping to the point where it is not considered respectable as an area of scientific enquiry. The most normal and widespread and popular of these theories - the one that has done the most to trivialize the whole topic - is the belief, or at least the suspicion that pets are no more than substitutes for "so-called" normal human relationships. This is a reasonable extension of the Freudian position as it was stated almost a 100 years ago.

I think a lot of people have come to pathologize their relationship with their animals. I know that for a long time I did until I became more aware of the power of the human animal bond in my practice and in my own life.

People have very powerful relationships with their pets and that does not mean they are substituting animals for humans or that they are incapable of forming intimate attachments with people. I think the human-animal bond is a different kind of relationship but no less authentic. I believe the human-animal bond offers a unique communication a nonverbal communication.

Here I do have to be careful. My relationships with my dogs is on one hand a nonverbal connection. At, the same time, it is a very verbal connection. One in which, when I speak I am aware that my dogs have a working vocabulary in English of about three or four hundred words. Service dogs, police dogs and search dogs have a working vocabulary of six hundred to a thousand words. This does not even take into account human voices intonations and body language. I don't suppose any one with a bird capable of speech would be calling their human animal bond nonverbal. We know that dolphins, whales and elephants communicate in sounds over vast sea and landscapes.

It is interesting to regard how the press treats pet stories. The Press seems almost as interested in people-pet stories as it is with the scandals of politicians and the sex lives of film stars. There is the ever popular "how the dog/cat/ferret found its way home again over a 2000 mile trek" or how the cat's meowing woke the family and saved them from the burning house or how Rex pulled little Hillary out of harms way. The other great theme is the degree to which we pet people will go to save our pets whether it is from a terminal illness or from the grip of a legal system. The press also loves the bizarre stories of either the mentally ill pet or the crazy pet owner. As we speak, the papers are full of such a story this week.

There is a real split in society between the attitude of denigration of the human-animal bond and the understanding of the profundity of his bond.

Caroline Knapp, wrote a beautiful book about her relationship with her dog Lucille "A Pack of two." as she puts it: "a lot of people quite frankly Think intense attachments to animals are weird and suspect, the domain of people who cant quite handle attachments to humans."

I think the point here is perhaps not to argue about whether dog love, or cat love or what have you, is a substitute for human love, but rather to detach the notion of "substitute" from its presumed inferiority to a "real thing."

As analysts we can over look the real relationship between pets and people. One of my colleagues told me about a patient she had lost in treatment because she found herself incapable of empathy with her about her pet. She told me not being a pet person and not having had pets growing up I believed pets are less important than people and that pets are a substitute for people. I just could not get the idea that it is not about pets INSTEAD OF people. She went on to say, The loss of the case reflected my own failure at empathy. I think I am not the only shrink like me out there. Lots of therapists don't understand the incredible importance of pets. It does not stop pet owners from the importance of people and for most pet people, their pets are not instead of people. I found myself implying to this patient that is wasn't healthy for her to be so attached to her pet and to be talking about her pet so much. Yet her attachment to her pet was one of the best parts of her and I though she was hiding out and I was wrong. I was missing a major part of her life. We all know how we hurt our patients when we misunderstand them. If we miss the human-animal bond we demonstrate we don't understand. In not acknowledging the human pet bond as a greatly valued primary relationship, rather than a substitute for other relationships, we blow the patient-therapist relationship in a very basic way.

It causes the same pain as receiving a gift with all the wrong symbolism. You know that feeling when someone gives you a gift and it is the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong value, the wrong gift for who you are. It is experienced as such a deep level of non-caring. It is the same in not understanding a patient's pet relationship. If the therapist does not understand this basic point of your life, then you are not being understood.

We need to love and we need to be loved. One of the worst thoughts a person can have is to think that they do not live in the mind and heart of another living being. I was in Maine last summer and remember one summer night looking at the heavens full of stars and thinking - what if there is no other life anywhere else in the universe except here on earth. The thought filled me with a huge loneliness... a universal loneliness. For people who had a primary object who failed, it is a wondrous thing that there is still the possibility of attachment. For people who lost trust in their primary objects, at an early age, be it through: abuse, indifference, separation or death... the human-animal bond offers a possibility of healing and reconstituting the self to try again beyond the ravages of isolation.

I like very much what Winnicott said about animals and projection. When we project onto animals...for reality to be real to us it must partake of illusion, says Winnicott, meaning that we must contribute to its construction or it will possess no sense of the real for us. Acknowledging that projection is not only inevitable but necessary. Projection is our contribution to the spaces of illusion in which we plumb the deep nature of the real.

Animals offer levels of communication that bring us to a deeper part of ourselves. It is fascinating to watch a patient who appears void of all knowledge of feelings suddenly respond to a dog in my office and know what they are feeling by describing an experience that is occurring in the present within themselves.
THE LOVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE AND THEIR PETS IS EXCEPTIONALLY PRIVATE AND UNAMBIGUOUS UNKNOWABLE IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS BECAUSE, AT IT'S DEEPEST LEVEL, IT IS ESSENTIALLY WORDLESS. Much of our ambivalence about people results in their capacity to soothe and to hurt with words.

Animals are intimates because they cannot talk.
Animals keep their silence and they bear witness.
Animals say no words that hurt
Animals offer no advice and ask no questions
(Aaron Beck)

In closing rather than the traditional Q&A I would like to ask people here today to talk about their emotional experience with animals.