The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Vol. 40, #2, Summer 2002

PANY's Response Post September 11
by Charles Goodstein, M.D.

We had never experienced anything like it. So quickly, so dramatically. Did it really happen? No, impossible. No, no. It didn't happen.

And then, so many emotions that were too much. The fear that someone we had known and loved, but had not been able to reach, might have been a victim. The awful sense of pain for those who had been lost. The impotence, the helplessness. The shattering of the illusion of safety and the coming to grips with a new and terrible sense of vulnerability. The feeling of having been abandoned. The numbness. We would be changed forever.

The enormity of the tragedy had not yet begun to sink in when a number of our members began spontaneous individual efforts, reaching out and offering help in their communities. They went out to schools, hospitals, places of worship, businesses, civic groups, fire-houses and agencies, doing what they could. They were contacted by media representatives, and they provided information for the public. For many members, the office was the primary locus for a response to the tragedy; a new trauma had been imposed and patient care had taken on an added dimension. There was an upsurge of requests for consultation; as often as not these patients made no reference to 9/11 and did not understand that it had been the tragedy that had provoked their request for help at this particular moment.

Recognizing the emergency nature of the situation, sensing that our members wanted our group to be part of the recovery, PANY President Robert Chalfin and NYUPI Director Michael Singer convened an organizational meeting on Saturday, September 15. Less than 24 hours after having received e-mail notification of the meeting, 37 members, faculty, candidates and students attended.

Motivations varied. Some felt at one with the sufferers, some were thankful and guilty that they had avoided direct confrontation with the event, some wanted to master what they were enduring passively.

But there were questions as to how we should proceed. Might we duplicate the work of others? Would a group as relatively small as ours quickly spread itself too thin? Was it enough that we had the desire to be helpful? Did we have the knowledge or experience to deal with the impact of massive trauma? Might we be imbued with a hubris which would lead us to think that our advanced training made us more capable than others in dealing with something none of us had ever seen?

The doubts were put aside. We knew that our training, background, and perspective had endowed us with special listening and analytic skills, and even if this were a different population and a different circumstance and a different setting than was usual for us, we could do good.

The internet proved to be the best way for us to remain in touch with each other. Members were surveyed as to their availability and the type of help that they could provide. The list of volunteers grew gradually to more than 80. Many said that they would provide free in-office consultation and treatment. Some were able to visit sites and provide help there.

Mr. Robert Miller, the husband of our member, Leslie Schweitzer-Miller, generously offered his help in coordinating our work. Through a variety of channels, individuals and groups learned of our existence and called him to asked about our resources. We began to learn where and how we could work.

We became involved with efforts at NYU's Medical Center, the downtown NYU campus and NYU law school, New York Law School, Beekman-Downtown Hospital, and other sites. Members would see patients in consultation, run process groups for residents, etc. When a student health services clinic was overwhelmed by the number of students who had lived near the World Trade Center, we began to see the patients that they had been turning away because of staff shortages.

Those working at various sites would alert Mr. Miller that they had seen prospective patients who would be calling on him to ask for further treatment. Reviewing the data base that he had devised, Mr. Miller would then call on members of the NYUPI/PANY response team.

It is impossible to offer a figure as to what the response team did. We did not keep records every time some member working on-site did not go through channels but simply called on another member on the list asking that a patient be seen as an emergency or for psycho-pharmacological assistance; or every time a member was contacted by a patient who had been alerted to our existence by a scrawled note hanging on a firehouse wall.

During the acute phase of work, we joined the victims and the survivors and got through via adaptive denial and a determination to not be undone. We made a number of observations about individual and group psychology, recognized anew what we know, and were humbled by what we don't know. At some future date, we will be able to make use of these observations and knowledge in our continuing education.

At the very time that the conscious and unconscious effects of the disaster become clearer, the initial public enthusiasm to embrace the victimized began to wane. We saw, and continued to see, at sites and in our offices, the more subtle impact of the disaster. There were the children whose emotional development had been altered, but whose parents had allowed themselves to remain in the dark. There were the adults who could not understand why symptoms had broken in the fall of 2001.

Few expect that we have seen the last terrorist act on American soil. We have confidence that the next time something happens, our group will again be up to the task.