Before moving to England, I have studied psychoanalysis for many years in Hebrew, and occupied both the patient’s couch and the therapist’s chair for more than a decade. Although I felt confident in my work in Hebrew, it seemed that transferring my analytic position to a different country and a new language was not a simple task as it first appeared to be. In my analysis in English for the first time, I realised that it was not just a different language that was spoken between us, but a whole unfamiliar encounter: the room was darker, my analysts’ chair was much further away from me, her facial expressions often seemed unfamiliar and her responses to my speaking distant and foreign. I felt that my words were groundlessly floating in the room, without being collected. Will she ever be able to touch them? Will my words be held? Will I ever feel understood again?
At first – I can say on hindsight – I was determined to clearly narrate myself in English too, and for a long time, I was trying to use language to fill the empty space between us with more and more words. I was convinced that it was the mere practicalities of scenery and language that were different, surely it is not me that has changed, and thus perfect translation of my life was reachable, just at the tip of the tongue. Preoccupied with the intensities of transferring between countries, I began my journey with a promise for a reconciliation of meanings in translation; with an expectation for narrowing the gap between languages, and with the prospect of eventually acquiring a larger variety of possibilities – two languages – in which I can explore and share my experience.
In Pontalis’ description of the relationship between language and melancholy, he writes that
Being born of loss language has nothing of its own, only an immense appetite! In order to remain alive, it must devour everything, until the last bone of every body: it has to become even more seductive than any sexual organ; more sentimental than tears; more convincing than a punch. Language bruises, excites, stunts. Holding everything and nothing it remains in an eternal oscillation between grandiose magic and essential emptiness; in a movement from manic victory to melancholy.
(Pontalis, 1980: 126, my translation from the Hebrew translation)