As I think back on my life and my career as a psychoanalyst, I see that the seeds were sown in childhood. When I was a girl, I loved to read, especially books about other children who pursued adventures in crazy, fantastical places – Dorothy in the land of Oz, or Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I wonder if being pulled by the lure of the unknown worlds in those books foreshadowed my fascination with exploring the unconscious – mine and of others. I also liked mysteries. I especially liked the daring adventures of the girl detective Nancy Drew, all the more appealing because we shared the same first name. My mother got me hooked on a lifetime love of good murder mysteries. She read Agatha Christie’s mysteries, which I began to read at a young age. Agatha Christie’s novels and murder mysteries hinge on the hidden motives of the characters, in contrast to detective novels that describe careful procedural searches for tangible clues. So, trying to figure out people’s motivations has always been a fascination for me. To this day, the excitement I feel meeting a new patient for the first time, wondering what lies ahead, what problems we will get into, what we will unearth and what we will discover about each other – echoes the excitement I felt turning the first pages of the books so long ago.
When I began college, I had a lot of interests but no idea in what I would major, let alone do after college. Following my love of reading, I took a lot of literature courses, but I was also interested in science, history, sociology. I took psychology courses because of my interest in human behaviors and motivations, but I found introductory courses in psychology superficial and disappointing. Ironically, it was in a freshman English course where I was first introduced to Freud. The class was assigned to read one of Freud’s Introductory Lectures as an example of a great essay ( this in spite of it’s being in translation from German.) The way Freud wrote those lectures, trying to interest the audience in his novel ideas and at the same time persuade them of their validity was very effective and compelling. Personally, I felt as if Freud was talking directly to me, and moreover, understood me. It was a defining moment.
At that point I did not really picture myself as a clinician. The psychology department at the University of California/ Berkeley, where I got my undergraduate degree was aimed at producing researchers in behavioral psychology. To earn extra money and get some class credits, I had a job working in the lab of one of the psychology professors who was producing major research in learning theory. The experiments consisted of putting the rats through mazes, under varying conditions. Late one Saturday afternoon, I was alone in the lab and feeding the rats in their cages. One rat escaped. Crawling on the floor with a big protective glove trying to catch the rat was a complete reversal of my automatic instinct to scream and run away from and not after a rat. At that moment, I asked myself, “What am I doing? What is a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?” I thought that the study of rat’s brains and behaviors did not translate clearly or convincingly to human beings. I knew then I could not continue down the path of devoting myself to that branch of psychology.
Meanwhile, in the summers of my last two years of undergraduate school, I found my way to a position as a camp counselor at Fresh Air Camp in Michigan, near Pinckney and not far from Ann Arbor. Counselors got room and board and firsthand supervised experience in working with troubled, underprivileged adolescent boys. I had the idea that I might find out if I would be able to put psychology to use working clinically with people ( not rats). Fresh Air Camp was based on the work of Fritz Redl and David Wineman, who had written a popular book, The Aggressive Child. Inspired also by the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, they utilized a psychoanalytically informed method to treat aggressive children and adolescents through interventions “in the field” At the camp the senior staff, led by David Wineman himself and two charismatic instructors from the U of M Psychology department, Elton McNeil and Richard Cutler, intervened with the boys on the spot when they acted out, which was incessantly, to try to talk them down when they became out of control and to put their feelings into words. I was deeply impressed watching talented clinicians at work help these kids and inspired to consider a career as a clinical psychologist. During those two summers I got to know many fellow students in education, social work and psychology who were counselors and junior staff, as well as instructors from various departments at the university who served as senior staff. It was a comfortable step to ditch the University of California and apply to graduate school in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan, where I already knew a lot of people.
Perhaps more importantly, the clinical psychology program at the Department of Psychology at Michigan was deeply psychoanalytic as was the Department of Psychiatry. The teachers were imports from famous psychoanalytic centers – the Anna Freud Center in London and the Menninger Clinic in Topeka and included many psychoanalysts such as Selma Freiberg or Humberto Najara, and psychoanalytic scholars such as Martin Mayman or Howard Shevrin.
The die was cast for my becoming a psychoanalyst. While I had studied learning theories and other psychological paradigms, for me, the psychoanalytic theory of mind made the most sense, and was a natural continuation of my interest in delving into the mysteries of the human mind from childhood.
In graduate school my first practicum was in psychological testing, including the Rorschach, and other projective tests. I loved psychological testing ,a kind of delving into the mind to figure out how to explain a given person’s behaviors and problems, a kind of detective work, if you will. This concentration in psychological testing formed the foundation of my education in ego psychology, dominant in psychoanalysis in the US at that time. Subsequently I did my internship at Detroit Receiving Hospital, the precursor of the later Detroit Psychiatric Institute (DPI), a psychoanalytically oriented facility which provided inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services in Detroit. It was a prime place for a psychology graduate students, psychiatric residents and social work trainees interested in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic training. Psychoanalysts from around the world presented at the grand rounds at DPI; local psychoanalysts gave seminars for the trainees – Channing Lipson, Nathan Segal, Editha and Richard Sterba. Many of my fellow trainees turned into my psychoanalytic teachers, supervisors and mentors, and some, such as Marvin Margolis and Richard Ruzumna, became lifelong colleagues and friends. While in training I began a personal analysis, which gave me firsthand knowledge in the power of psychoanalysis to improve and change lives.
Immediately after I finished graduate school I took a job in the out- patient department of DPI and shortly after met my husband, a Detroiter. I quit my job to care for my two young children and worked a few hours a week doing individual and group therapy. When my children were in grade school I began to think about the direction of my career. I wanted to be a better therapist and work more deeply with my patients. I returned to DPI as head of the psychology department, where I became immersed in psychodynamic education and surrounded by psychoanalysts once again. The wish to become a psychoanalyst, which obviously had been nascent within me for a long time, emerged and became more insistent and do-able. I applied then as a candidate. I never regretted my decision to become a psychoanalyst.
October, 2024
2 Responses to “The Analyst’s View: Nancy Kulish, Ph.D.”
I deeply enjoyed your article about why you became a psychoanalyst. I have always appreciated your discussions on psychoanalysis and case presentations. By the way, years ago i had the pleasure of meeting your wonderful daughter at Camp Michigania. I hope to see you soon, most likely at a psychoanalytic meeting. Stay well, Al michaels.
Nancy – You are such a wonderful teacher, supervisor, and colleague. You have contributed so much to our Institute, Society, and the broader community. Thank you for sharing your story!
2 Responses to “The Analyst’s View: Nancy Kulish, Ph.D.”
Alvin michaels
I deeply enjoyed your article about why you became a psychoanalyst. I have always appreciated your discussions on psychoanalysis and case presentations. By the way, years ago i had the pleasure of meeting your wonderful daughter at Camp Michigania. I hope to see you soon, most likely at a psychoanalytic meeting. Stay well, Al michaels.
David Votruba
Nancy – You are such a wonderful teacher, supervisor, and colleague. You have contributed so much to our Institute, Society, and the broader community. Thank you for sharing your story!