Is psychoanalysis a cheerless (Freud-less) profession? Toward a psychoanalysis of joy

Joy can be understood as a basic form of resonance. Psychodynamically, joy is complementary to the feeling of anxiety. Whereas anxiety reflects psychi c distress in connection with problems of structuring, joy is the expressio n of successful (re)structuring. It is the feeling of self-discovery, of a new beginning, and of self-renewal. In stark contrast, there are numerous e mpirically supported indications that there is little evidence of feelings of joy in the psychoanalytic literature. Why is this the case? Pursuing his analysis of this apparent but unspoken taboo against joy in professional a nalytic writing, the author outlines a psychoanalysis of joy in the hope th at it will encourage analysts to be more aware and expressly affirmative of joy as it occurs in their work.