ABSTRACT
The author remembers her 12 years at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and the lessons she learned from her teacher Phyllis Meadow that were critical to her development as a psychoanalyst. Very aggressively rejecting the theory of the death instinct and arguing with Meadow about it led to an understanding of aggression, not as something one has to be “cured of, but as an energy that can foster creativity and intellectual learning. Confronting her anxieties about being too stupid or too crazy to be an analyst enabled the author to learn to laugh at her fears and self-doubt and bring all her stupidity and insanity into the work of understanding patients.
