Beyond the body lies the soul
Two years ago, Maria Camila began her psychoanalytic experience, during which she realised that “the process is more important than the result”. She sought out her psychoanalyst, Yoany Rendón, due to issues with her mother and, from this starting point, discovered and came to understand many aspects of her uniqueness that enrich not only her private life but also her professional life.
Since embarking on her own analytical process, she has been consulted even more frequently than before in her role as a general practitioner at a general hospital. She tells us that, as a doctor, she now understands her patients better, “as they often somatise pain that is not of a physical nature – but stems from the soul”. “My patients come to be heard”, because she does not overlook “the holistic aspect that is essential to a person’s well-being”.
The hospital director and her colleagues have noticed the change in her working methods and welcome it; she has even been rewarded with a better contract and her work is valued.
Through her encounter with psychoanalysis, she began even more than before to “question the healthcare system in which one is conditioned”, in which “behind mental illnesses such as depression lies a pharmaceutical industry, which is ultimately a business”. These approaches “do not ask what the patient is resisting, nor do they help to find the root and origin of a person’s suffering”.
Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, “teaches us to question everything”, for “beyond the body there is the soul”, and what patients often need is for someone to listen to them. In this way, she also questions her integrity as a doctor, yet “I will not give up my desire, my profession as a doctor”. And so Camila continues as a sought-after doctor, with her “strong intuition and a knowledge I do not doubt”.
