2008 Woodie Awards
Lucy Daniels discusses the unconsious and problems that interfere with creating
Kate Musselwhite
Issue date: 10/31/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
Clinical psychologist Lucy Daniels visited UNCG Thursday night to lecture about the importance of finding the power in our problems and, in turn, the ability, with psychoanalytical treatment, to turn those problems into a mode of achieving emotional and creative freedom.
Creator of two non-profit organizations, author of five books and the youngest recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, Daniels, mother of four and now a grandmother as well, shared the story of her own pain ridden childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which she faced traumas - a childhood encounter with her intimidating father, her teenage battle with anorexia nervosa and stay in a mental hospital and later two divorces and a writer's block - that caused fear and feelings of weakness that continually surfaced throughout her life, leaving her unable to be happy and "free" of her emotional issues.
Throughout the course of her psychoanalytic treatment that she received as a single mother of four and student in her forties, she says she realized the underlying problems that lay in her "unconscious." These unconscious problems, stemming from childhood traumas and inner fears and doubts, led to her fear of talking on the telephone, her bout with anorexia and her later self doubt as a writer, which all ultimately served as a barrier to her uncovering of their roots and importance. Psychoanalysis, she says, in which her dreams were closely observed and interpreted specifically in a very Freudian-like manner, allowed her to realize the actual origin of these debilitating issues and also to accept and confront the life-long issues that had prevented her from being "liberated" emotionally.
After psychoanalysis, she says, it was revealed to her that her not eating and writing had come from these "same unrecognizable fear[s]," and she was able to separate herself from her past traumas, crushing fears to eventually become "emotionally liberated."
And this "liberation" that she says she lived so long without "turned [her] on to liberating others" emotionally as well.
Creator of two non-profit organizations, author of five books and the youngest recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, Daniels, mother of four and now a grandmother as well, shared the story of her own pain ridden childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which she faced traumas - a childhood encounter with her intimidating father, her teenage battle with anorexia nervosa and stay in a mental hospital and later two divorces and a writer's block - that caused fear and feelings of weakness that continually surfaced throughout her life, leaving her unable to be happy and "free" of her emotional issues.
Throughout the course of her psychoanalytic treatment that she received as a single mother of four and student in her forties, she says she realized the underlying problems that lay in her "unconscious." These unconscious problems, stemming from childhood traumas and inner fears and doubts, led to her fear of talking on the telephone, her bout with anorexia and her later self doubt as a writer, which all ultimately served as a barrier to her uncovering of their roots and importance. Psychoanalysis, she says, in which her dreams were closely observed and interpreted specifically in a very Freudian-like manner, allowed her to realize the actual origin of these debilitating issues and also to accept and confront the life-long issues that had prevented her from being "liberated" emotionally.
After psychoanalysis, she says, it was revealed to her that her not eating and writing had come from these "same unrecognizable fear[s]," and she was able to separate herself from her past traumas, crushing fears to eventually become "emotionally liberated."
And this "liberation" that she says she lived so long without "turned [her] on to liberating others" emotionally as well.
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