My Fountain Pen Life: Psychologist Heal Thyself!

 

Fountain Pens, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Goulet Pens, Anhedonia, Hobbies

Last night, I received a box in the mail.  It was filled with a cornucopia of stuff: A fountain pen from Germany, ink from France, paper from Japan, and envelopes from Belgium.  What a miracle!  I felt happy and excited as I unboxed a present - one that I had paid for - but one that was the result of the labor of many people across the world.

I first became intrigued by fountain pens when I was in the fifth grade.  The disposable fountain pen, available at the local grocery story in the school supplies section, allowed my hand to glide effortlessly across the page when writing.  It was a really cool sensation.

My handwriting, by the way, has always been terrible.  I was held back from learning cursive because my printing was so bad.  My students have for years complained that they can’t read my writing and when I write notes on birthday and Christmas cards, my kids strain to be able to make sense of my scribbles.

Despite my continuing to be challenged at writing, when I began to practice as a psychoanalyst, I began to write a lot.  I started taking verbatim notes of psychoanalytic and then also my psychotherapy sessions, just as I had always taken verbatim notes when doing psychological testing – like when administering the Rorschach.

Fifteen years or so ago, looking for a smoother writing experience, I went into a high-end pen store in Washington D.C. while there for a convention or something.  I was now writing for a good portion of every day, taking notes that were as close to verbatim as I could get them while listening to patients and while doing psychological testing.  I hoped to find something more sophisticated than the ball point pens that came my way seemingly without any effort.

For whatever reason, perhaps because I didn’t want to spend much money, the salesperson led me to the roller ball case.  The experience of writing with the sample pens was much better than writing with a ball point, so I bought one – a pen that was made of stainless steel and cost much more than I expected to spend.

I rediscovered fountain pens a few years after that (and not so long ago) when I was at a charity silent auction.  Someone had donated some boxed high-end pens that I entered the winning bid for. 

Once again, I experienced the sense of ease and delight in writing that my fifth-grade self had so enjoyed.  It was even better than the roller ball experience, even if not quite as reliable and straightforward.

I needed ink for the pens, and discovered that we had a local store that sold pens.  After buying ink and asking for help with my pens, the proprietor proposed that I buy pens from him rather than buying vintage pens at auction because he would provide service if the pens failed to serve or were substandard when I bought them. 

I began buying student pens and worked my way up to much more delightful (and expensive) pens rather quickly.  I was in search of a writing experience that would become unconscious – one where the words would flow as easily and effortlessly out of the ends of my fingertips as smoothly as they had entered my ears.

Under the proprietor’s guidance, I found what I have since learned is referred to as a grail pen – a Pelikan 600 special edition – and I achieved the nirvana writing experience I was looking for.  Because I write so much, the nib of the pen (the part of the pen that touches the paper) quickly became even smoother than it had been at the beginning, and writing became effortless and automatic.

There were days when I was completely and totally unconscious of writing, but there was a record of the session on the legal pad I was holding.

I was so enamored of this pen that I carried it with me everywhere – including on the weekends when I was wearing shirts with no pockets and put the pen into my jeans pocket.  I had not been warned that this would stress the pen, but this is exactly what happened and soon it was leaking and then it became separated along the seams of the ink window.

Remembering what the proprietor had said, I returned to him, pen in hand.  He took it from me, and mailed it off to the manufacturer to be repaired.  Then COVID hit.  I was without my favorite pen, but had a other pens that, while not as satisfactory to use, would do in the pinch I was in. 

With everything else that was going on, I could survive without my favorite pen for a while…

But that time stretched.  When I checked in with the proprietor he explained that COVID was causing havoc with the factory’s ability to fix the pen – and there were also shipping problems.  In any case, my pen was not coming any time soon, even as the pandemic was waning and we were returning to more or less normal operations all over the world.

I wanted that pen feeling back, so a year ago, feeling stuck in limbo, I went to the pen store where they reassured me that the pen was on the way but didn’t know when it would appear, so I bought a replacement Pelican 600 from the proprietor’s assistant assuming that a regular 600 was the same as a special edition 600, but it was not.  The pen neither wrote as smoothly (it was not, in the parlance that I am now speaking, as wet) nor did it maintain the ability to write when my patients were silent or I didn’t take notes during a few minute interchange.  It had, after those times, what I have now learned to call a hard start.

When I took it back to complain about it, the proprietor explained that I had simply not bought an equivalent pen (even though it cost the same amount of money).  Apparently the nibs on the special editions are superior to the nibs on regular pens, but he assured me that my pen would be returned “the following week”. 

I haven’t yet explained that a grail pen is expensive.  Really expensive.  And buying two of them is more than I can justify to myself. 

So, I was in a pickle. 

Not only was my pen not available, we had been in lockdown and I was having a hard time feeling comfortable moving back out of it, my case load had ballooned as the COVID crisis strained the mental health system, the reluctant son, who had moved back home during the pandemic, moved out for good, and the reluctant wife took on a position that involved commuting to DC most weeks every month.

Life lost some of its zest for me.  I became what we call anhedonic – I did not have interest in things that had formerly been interesting to me.

But I was still looking for a better pen experience.  I was still intrigued by the prospect of finding the elusive grail pen that would bring writing nirvana back to me.

I started exploring the pen world, and I discovered online pen stores.  These seem to have emerged as the fountain pen world (not unlike the psychoanalytic world on a somewhat regular basis) seemed poised on the brink of extinction.

I found a particular retailer, Goulet Pens, that was started out of the owner’s garage as the internet and e-tail were becoming a thing.  He began posting educational videos that also educated the viewer about his products, and I began to listen to the Goulet Pen Cast on a regular basis.

I was learning about pens and paper and ink.  And I was, without quite knowing that I was doing it, joining what they refer to as the pen community.

I bought a book by Michael Sull, master penman, on the Art of Cursive Writing.  Using this book, I practiced the Palmer method of cursive writing, a system that was developed in the 1880s as typewriters were first emerging. 

The Parker system is a system intended to simplify former methods of cursive writing and to make cursive writing as fast as typing (I’m nowhere near as fast at writing as I am at typing on a modern computer keyboard – though I might be able to keep up with myself on an old manual typewriter).  The Parker system includes learning about the mechanics of writing – that are based on how the fingers, wrist, arm and shoulder should be involved in writing, and proper writing posture is an important component of the system.  And the heart of the system is practice.  The book is replete with examples of cursive writing models to copy and multiple exercises to limber up the writer to engage in writing.

I dove into learning a new skill. 

Muscle memory, I was learning from neuropsychoanalysts, is hard to lay down.  This is the memory that they talk about needing 10,000 repetitions to put into place.  It is the memory involved in riding a bicycle.  Once learned, it is hard to forget.  So I was learning a system to replace an old (problematic) system that kept interfering with the new learning.

Suddenly, instead of writing faster, I was writing much more slowly.  I had to think about how to form each letter.  One of the reasons my handwriting was so bad, I learned, is that once I started writing a word – and before I finished it, I began thinking about the next word.  This meant that I didn’t pay much attention to the word I was actually writing.  That was no longer possible when I was trying to write each letter in each word.  I was now much more present to the process of writing.

I was engaged in a practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness was actually always at the root of the reason that I was taking notes in sessions.  Taking notes did two things – it made sure that I had a record of what the patient said, and it preventing me from jumping in too quickly when they were done speaking.  I had to catch up when writing and while I did that the patient would often take off with their next thought – and this is what we call free association – the thing that we are trying to promote in a psychoanalytic treatment. 

Meanwhile, the argument against writing down what our patients are saying is that it interferes with our own evenly hovering attention – the state that we try to achieve when we are listening to our patients.

In part because I am pretty distractible, the writing down of what patients are saying actually helps me remain hovering in the neighborhood of what is on the patient’s mind rather than becoming more caught up in what is going on in my mind.  And if I do begin to drift, which is not necessarily bad – my associations to the patient’s material are relevant - I can catch up by glancing back at what I have (unconsciously) been writing to see where the patient’s material has taken them.

Of course, once I started paying attention to the individual letters that I was writing, it became more difficult, for a while, to hear the content of what the patient was saying.  I was also writing down less of the material because I was writing slower, not faster.  Also, it was harder to attend to my own thoughts.  I was like one of those old spinning plate jugglers trying to keep everything going. But I have been at this new way of writing now for four or five months and, while not back to my former speed or level of unconsciousness of the writing, I am able to be mindful of both the writing and the material in a more balanced way.

Meanwhile, I have become caught up in something I had not expected.  I am avaricious about pens and pen products, but angry enough at my local supplier that I have turned to the on-line retailer to supply me with new material. 

At first, as I listened to podcasts about pens, I was disdainful of the attention to pen colors and to the variety of ink colors and to the quality of the paper that people use to write.  I said to myself, “Give me a bottle of blue ink, a legal pad of paper and a pen that functions well, and I am in good shape.  I am here for the functionality of pens, not for the aesthetic quality of the experience.”

But I began to sense that had never been true.  I like the tactile qualities of writing.  I like the feedback from pen on paper.  I also prefer a brilliant blue ink on white paper to muddy blue on yellow paper that becomes a dull green as a result of the combination of colors.  And I like grey ink, and green ink… I found that the quality of the writing experience was affecting my mood.

I am still somewhat disdainful of the color of the pen as a drawing card, and I am careful about my investments in pens themselves, but I now have an array of ink colors, my wife bought another grail pen for my birthday, the Pilot Custom 823, which has both a soft nib and a large ink supply in the pen so that I don’t have to refill the pen in the middle of sessions – I can just refill it once a day.  And I have begun to be sensitive to the smoothness of the paper that I write on.  Some legal pads are smoother than others and there are papers that are designed specifically for fountain pens.

And, truth be told, avarice has always been a part of my attraction to pens.  In fifth grade, when the pens I used ran out of ink, I would steal a replacement pen on my walk home from school when I made a detour to the grocery store.  My analyst was very interested in this behavior, and I still am.  I’m not quite sure why I didn’t ask to buy replacement pens (or perhaps ink cartridges – the details of my life of crime have become murky at this point), but I think it felt self-indulgent, something that was frowned upon in my family.

Of course, thinking about the symbolism at this moment, it would be possible to think of the pen as a phallic symbol and one could offer the interpretation that stealing pens was a way of covertly asserting my masculinity, but that doesn’t fit with my lived experience of the aesthetic pleasure of the pen and the writing experience.  I think the ink, which I have heard described in some case studies as being like sperm was, for me, more like liquid love (though some people may equate those two thoughts).

In any case, what was remarkable for me about the writing experience as an adult is that it drew me back into the world – a world that our senses pull us towards by offering delightful aesthetic experiences.  And writing with a fountain pen (and acquiring pen, ink and paper) were certainly part of that.

Of course, mindfulness is also a way of drawing people back into the world.  I expect there was a synergy between the sensual and the cerebral.

So, I was not surprised to read in a random posting for public consumption that symptom focused psychotherapists recommend that people with anhedonic depression pick up a hobby.  Becoming interested in something, anything, stimulates (from a neuropsychoanalytic perspective) the seeking drive (and the sexual drive, from the neuropsychoanalytic perspective, is a subset of the seeking drive).  Once we get the seeking drive fired up again, we may start seeking many other things, and hobby, or art – or a beautiful sunset – may help us get out of a funk and become curious about the world and the people in it again.

Before I wrap this up, I think it important to note that there was another effect of using fountain pens.  I became interested not just in taking dictation, as it were, from my patients, but in writing using a pen.  This turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.

First of all, taking dictation from my own mind is more complicated because I am not just taking dictation, but helping to form the thoughts.  It is harder to do both of those things at once.

A friend and former roommate from graduate school – now an English professor and professional essayist, had once proposed that we correspond.  Intimidated by his superior writing skills, I had demurred, but remembering his offer, I proposed that this would be a good time to try that.  We have been corresponding regularly since then and writing letters is much harder when using a pen than when composing an email.

Writing with a pen requires forethought.  As the bard once stated, the pen having writ moves on.  Cutting and pasting with actual paper is laborious and makes for a terrible letter.  Having an idea in mind, or a set of ideas, and then figuring out how to structure them together and how to structure each on of them individually before setting pen to paper is a challenge.  No wonder outlines used to be recommended as a means towards writing a paper. 

When writing an email, I can mask my task focus by inserting a query about how an ailing friend is doing – or congratulate them on something they have accomplished after having stated my request or whatever other business I have, discretely inserting it above the request so that they don’t know quite how tactless and boorish I actually am.  With pen and paper, I have to bring the person as well as the request to mind if I want to write a letter that includes my genuine concern.  I must become mindful not just of the result that I want, but of the person I am writing to.

The investment of time and energy, and the mindfulness required to write letters is paying off over time as I become more cognizant of just how to planfully communicate.  It is also exciting again to go to the mailbox.  There might be a letter there from my friend – or from another friend or relative to whom I have written and who may choose to write me back, rather than the usual mess of junk mail.

One of the unexpected side effects of learning a new style of writing is that this has been disorienting to some of the readers of my letters.  Who is this person, they ask, those who are familiar with my old style of writing.  Doesn’t a person’s handwriting tell us something about that person and feel familiar – in the way that their features and even their smell can feel familiar and comfortable?

As a further complication, a young cousin who received a card on the occasion of her wedding confessed that she could not read cursive.  The fountain pen apocalypse may, in fact, be - just around the corner!

But in the meantime, the pleasure of receiving a letter is akin to the pleasure of receiving a box full of pens, ink and paper – and it is more directly an experience of being loved, which is, I think, what the material goods are almost certainly a substitute for  (I am still not sure why I could not ask directly for pen and ink as a symbol of being loved when I was a fifth grader, but rather felt that I needed to steal them and the love that they probably represented).

On the other hand, for a while I was trying to write my first draft of these blog posts out by hand.  What a mess.  Mostly because I was then having to retype what I had already written, more than doubling the time it took to post – something that is partially responsible for the relatively few posts that I have been writing over the past six months.  But also because my writing of these posts is partially a free associative process, so as I copied the writing into the computer that would spark new directions in my thinking and I would begin to stray more and more from the original thesis and suddenly I was confronted with two parallel texts, each of which had strengths and weaknesses, and reconciling them is more difficult than just editing a prior version on the word processor.

So, my primary use of the fountain pen is still as a tool to help me better listen and respond to my patients.  The  Pilot pen is delightful, and I am getting better at using the Palmer style more and more unconsciously, but I have not yet experienced the nirvana convergence of pen, ink, paper and mind that allows for a totally unconscious writing experience, freeing me up to be even more present to the experience of another human being.

The reluctant wife has confronted the local proprietor (confrontation is not my strong suit) and he has a agreed to an actual timeline, rather than the imaginary “next week” timeline that he continues to espouse, to produce the repaired pen or replace it (To be fair, he has come through with repairs to other pens in the past).  Meanwhile, I will be ordering a pen from another German company with a reputation for a smooth writing experience.  While the Japanese pens are quite smooth, they are, at their heart, designed for a culture that writes characters.  The Germans are writing for a population that writes in cursive and their nibs are intended to create an experience of flow rather than precision. 

I trust that I will soon return to the occasional nirvana state that I formerly achieved, but with the benefit of greater legibility (truth be told, I was often unable to read my own writing, and still struggle with it at times – but it is much better).  Even if I don’t obtain writing nirvana, the hope that I may has improved my general mood, and that seems to me to be a justification for the investment of time and energy in mindfully putting pen to paper.  In addition, the feeling of being gifted by both the material goods and the activity of writing is passed on to others in my improved listening and the sending of legible letters to populate the mailboxes of friends and family.

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