About Jennifer Nash Flower, Ph.D

Some time ago I closed my psychoanalytic practice in New York City, bought a 17-year-old Airstream motor home and a bright blue Mini CooperS and drove off into the sunset.  It was the obvious step in many converging processes in my life.  It was the step I took at my live edge, where I was growing, where I was willing to take risks, and where I was most alive.

It’s not the obvious move for a psychoanalyst which is partly why I’ve come to share this blog with you.  It turned out that I was not the kind of psychoanalyst who continues to do what I was doing.  For me, sitting in the same chair all day in a small, dark room, no matter how involved I felt with my patients, just felt stifling.  I needed more physical serendipity.  I needed to encounter whomever and whatever came around the corner.  And I had a lot of entrepreneurial interests that were really just a source of entertainment for my professional friends.  I needed other outlets for my energy.

I had known from a very early age that I wanted to be a psychoanalyst, although it took me a while to figure out that that’s what it was called.  I was fortunate in knowing what I wanted to do.  But after many years it no longer felt right.   Many of us, the members of the human race, spend a lot of time trying to do the right thing, or trying to continue to do the right thing.  We keep trying to mold ourselves into something we see in our minds or, bless our hearts, in the minds of others.

Here’s the point:  Even if you feel trapped and you’ve lost your imagination, if you want to stay alive inside you have to move toward the edge of your competence, your awareness, toward what attracts your interest.

Why?  How?  What the hell am I talking about?  Ask any neurologist, any student of behavior, any high school kid who tried to memorize all those vocabulary words for the SAT.  You don’t easily learn the stuff that’s not relevant, you don’t remember “suzerainty” unless you’re into foreign affairs or your name is Susan.  You don’t grow wings if you don’t have wing stumps.  You don’t love unless you’re strong enough to long.  And you don’t sit still if your body wants to move.

I have trained at some of the best schools in the country, worked and done research at the most advanced institutions.  I’ve spent many years with patients and have read deeply and broadly in the ways of the heart and mind.  It still comes down to the same thing for me, learning to live at your edge, following your internal flow.  (It’s just a coincidence that recently I married a man called Joe Flower.  I think.)

So the work I do in my life and with you is about that, about learning your edge, how to find it, move with, and involve others in it.  It comes from your psychological grace and strength, the kind you were born with.  It’s natural.  And it’s also something you can learn more about.  If you make space for it in your mind, in your life, at least every now and then, your life will be a lot easier, more of the blessing you’ve heard it can be.