Joseph Scalia wants to extend the benefits of psychoanalysis

By CHRIS JUNGHANS, For the Chronicle

Joseph Scalia wants to extend the benefits of psychoanalysis beyond his counseling practice to residents of Bozeman and the state.

Scalia is executive director of the Northern Rockies Psychoanalytic Institute which he founded here in 2002. The institute is one of the few places in the Northwest that trains and certifies psychoanalysts.

"I've always wanted to introduce the lessons of psychoanalysis into the community of Montana," Scalia said.

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to understand the unconscious drives that cause people to repeatedly "defeat themselves" in a variety of ways.

Culturally, Americans often refuse to accept just how difficult life can be, he said.

"We always want to think we can move through life without having moods that can range from the joyful, anxious or depressed," Scalia said. But "the human condition is, among other things, inherently traumatic."

The result is that people, in the face of life's experiences, sometimes behave in ways that are actually unhealthy or even "pathological," he said. "There are things we repeatedly do despite our best efforts to do the contrary."

Simply put, "psychoanalysis is a way to make changes in a person," Erna Smeets, a student at the institute, said.

The institute, located in Scalia's office at 13 S. Willson Ave., has about 10 students, most have graduate degrees and other certifications in counseling.

Depending on the course of study, students spend four to eight years to certify as psychoanalysts or psychoanalytical therapists. Certification requires the students themselves undergo psychoanalysis.

Smeet, who is graduating this spring with a degree in counseling from Montana State University, has simultaneously been training at the institute since it was founded. Prior to that, she was a student at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis.

The difference between psychoanalytic training and traditional counseling has been frustrating at times, she said, but "My heart is with the institute."

People in psychoanalysis -- who are called "analysands" -- lie on the couch and "free associate without any attempt to censor what comes to mind," Scalia said. "A picture of the person's mental life becomes part of the analytic dialogue.

"In free association, one allows thoughts to emerge unbidden by any notion of logical or Western discourse," he said.

In an effort to broaden the institute's reach in the community, Scalia is starting a speaker series.

On May 14 Jeffrey Eaton of Seattle will talk about how psychoanalysis can help people cope with the challenges and suffering of daily life.

Scalia himself will soon offer a discussion of parenting issues.

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