the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

30 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
It is early September. New York psychoanalysts return to
their practices. Lemming-like, I do too. What is left for me is only
my small private practice. I call two patients to resume work. All
of the eight or so patients have been waiting for me these seven
months, some waiting with other therapists. I am moved by their
constancy.
I am naïve about continuing a practice, since no one has told me I can’t.
The only advice I’ve gotten is from a doctor after the surgery who said,
“You are a high level aphasic; you don’t need speech therapy. Just don’t lift
pianos.”
My ability to listen and to speak just a few words should serve well
enough. It doesn’t. In session I hear what the patient says and understand
the depth of it. I receive language, think about it. I think without words to
think in. It is all in there, reflecting, observing, considering, comparing. But
this observing mind doesn’t translate into articulate organizing words for
my verbal mind. What I think is far too complex for the slow small range of
words I have for thinking.
I have a wordless mind trying to talk to a word mind. My thinking is
a puzzle. I must find the pieces of words to construct a picture of my inner
conversation. But most of the pieces are still in the black box. I clutch at the
door, wrestle to pry it open, put my foot on the sill as a wedge, reach in, and
scramble around to find pieces to fit. The struggle goes on even when I say
nothing.
The practice is exhausting, but I continue. The work with patients is a
deep pleasure to me. It is what is left to me of my professional identity—and
my sole income now. In session I’m attentive and quietly elated. It is after
the session when the fatigue slides in. Listening is my strength, inward and
outward. I hear the emotions and thoughts patients express and feel empathy.
My own emotions, though, don’t rise to the surface as they did before. They
don’t clutter the emotional pathways between us. The practice has a certain
simplicity in that way.