"I believe we must honor all languages and 'the meaning of each word and nuance whether they [the authors] are from different geographical lands or from different emotional or spiritual lands. By honor I mean simply to struggle to understand. I personally mean to be curious rather than to judge. WE MUST KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS. What do you mean when you say this? ...From there maybe a dialogue can start. I struggle to keep the element of surprise alive in other words to hold an unknown to what the answer could possible be."

(www.espritpublications.ca Guestbook entry posted Dec. 12 /03 under the topic "Espritedu reflections/cultural inclusion")

I am writing this paper because a few months ago I attended a lecture on the history of psychoanalysis and had difficulty following some of the presentation, and engaging in the written communication that followed. English is my second language, and I see academic English as my third(2) language.

I have no trouble writing about my experiences, my journeys, and my history with my own words. But when it comes to academic language, I find it sometimes difficult to comprehend and to absorb as embodied learning. I dismiss it with a feeling that academic language is used by and for a select few and with that I raise the drawbridge of resentment. I am presently challenging myself to look at academic language differently and begin to wrestle with it.

Although absorbing and integrating academic communication is a complex issue for me, I must learn to respect this complexity as my lived experience, one that is not comparable to anyone else's. This is helpful as I now realize that everyone else could come from his or her own places of complexity. If I have integrity about my lived life then I don't have to be resentful with others when I don't understand their experience or their use of academic language, for example. I can ask questions and if I receive judgement or anger about my questionings, I know now that this is not my problem. To be judged and dismissed harshly because I understand two languages and am working on my third seems ridiculous. Now I truly see my accomplishments.

Language is so important and the pain of learning a new language was personally excruciating. I did not want to depart from my homeland when I was fourteen years old so when I first arrived here and had to learn English I closed my ears and wanted nothing to do with such a foreign tongue. As a child and adolescent when things were difficult I would go into a rage around how much I intensely disliked the thing that was making my life difficult. But now as an adult, I accept stretching in many areas of my life and I want to grapple with my third language differently. The challenge for me is to embrace this new learning with commitment and not with aversion.

When we arrived in Canada my parents were advised to hold me back a year and to place me in grade eight so that I could learn more English before going to high school. I had a wonderful teacher and she not only helped me with my English, she encouraged me to aim for a university education.

The way I learned the English language was by reading, and I loved to read. The school I attended had an amazing library, which I adored and I also lived close to a wonderful public library. It felt like such richness to me to be able to borrow books. Reading in English allowed me to escape from the reality of my pain of having left my homeland and of the Canadians around me not wanting new immigrants. Many times, I would feel helpless and enraged and unable to do anything about it. I would get very angry with my parents, siblings and my new country. I felt my hands were tied and there was nothing I could do other than grow up quickly and get on with my life. The emotional pain of it all was so huge that it affected the entire family. I have discovered that this helplessness that I felt and my murderous feelings cut me off so that I could not grow and connect with the joy I felt about aspirations I had had once of being a teacher.

When I first arrived in Canada I felt like a newborn: everything was so different. I realized that my passions and my familiar gestures were not understood nor were people as friendly as I was. To them I was just a new immigrant who could not speak English. I began to feel inferior for who I was. This feeling blocked a kind of dignity that I should have had in my voice about my experience in this new country. As a result of this pain I rejected the possibility of further refining my knowledge of this foreign language called English. For example, I was completely unmotivated to continue my struggle to learn the nuances of the language and connect it to my experiences in Canada.

My grade nine English was all about Shakespeare and I fell in love with his plays because my English teacher taught them with such passion. But thirty-five years ago, the high school I attended did not have help for immigrant children who needed to learn English as a second language. Immigrant adolescents had other issues and concerns and as I grew into an older teenager I realized that I did not have the emotional strength needed to propel myself forward and into the levels required to access higher education. Lack of self-confidence and self-esteem were a huge factor. I felt inferior to the other young people because I could not speak English properly, and so I began to gear myself to finish school and get a job.

Psychotherapy has helped to heal my emotional life. Recently, I put behind me some of my rage and anger around my first hand experiences of cultural and gender biases and I am realizing that I should stop resisting Mr. Freud and give him his due. I can now appreciate that he was a true innovator in spite of living in a society that revered the male person. It is within this historical context that he succeeded in creating the field of psychoanalysis and a specialized language that is valuable for students of psychology.

"...He provided us with a language for addressing some of our most compelling concerns... Freud fashioned an instrument that stimulated both his own and his readers' associative and critical process...awareness that his scientific language, by its nature, was metaphorical and distorting, and yet that it was only by virtue of such distortion that he could perceive psychical process." (Mahoney, 1998, p. 39).

Freud had the courage to develop ideas that were controversial for his time and for this I admire him. He used the writing process to express himself creatively as well as professionally and in so doing continued to grow. I mentioned earlier that I can easily talk and write about my life stories, but I now want to develop a way to get to the essence of my experiences and share their universal lessons. I am discovering the importance of academic language as a learning and teaching tool. Now what is compelling me to go forward with my training is the realization that I do have a desire to learn and to embody this third language. I do feel curious about my own intellectual capabilities and my abilities to apply critical thinking. As I continue travelling on this path of new learning I feel that it is a challenge for me but a worthy one. A crucial message in Freud's writings is that "he expects his readers to work in order to understand him; in other words, he summons us to "reading-work". Permeating his writing the implied understanding that any subject, and especially psychoanalysis itself, is apt to be misread; " his exposition of psychoanalysis, furthermore, bears the implicit plea for a self applied psychoanalysis." (Ibid. p. 39)

In closing this essay with the following quote I feel I am making a human connection with the person of Freud, as well as an intimate connection with my own writing efforts. "But there was a deeper level of meaning to Freud's writing; more that just a working medium, it was for him personally, as well as professionally, an organizing and creative experience. He would have agreed with St. Augustine, who said: "Admittedly, therefore, I try to count myself among those who write as they progress and who progress as they write" (Ibid. p. 39)

References

(1) Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner was directed by Zacharias Kunuk, written by Paul Apak Angilirq, and produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc., and the National Film Board in 2000.

(2) I would like to acknowledge that my colleague Joanne Corbeil, co-founder of Espritedu Training for Psychotherapists calls academic English a third language for people who have English as a second language. I feel the use of the expression 'third language' suits my essay perfectly.

Mahony, Patrick J. (1998) "Freud's World of Work" in Freud Conflict and Culture (Essays of his life, work and legacy). Michael S. Roth, editor. New York: Random House.