About Betsy Nettleton, PsyD
Training and Professional Background
I completed my doctoral training at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2006. I am presently completing psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis.
Before my clinical work, I studied biology at the University of Minnesota. I loved the coursework, the glimpse into the complicated vitality beneath the surface. The molecules and microbes felt like a secret universe.
During this time, I worked at the Bell Museum of Natural History. At the museum, I encountered a very psychoanalytic idea: “The answer is the death of the question.” There were no labels on the animal exhibits. So if someone asked, “What is that?” we were trained to respond, “What do you think it is?” The children were enthusiastic participants, playing with the questions, guessing everything from unicorns to narwhals to dragons. They had not yet learned to temper their enthusiasm or feel shame about not knowing a “correct” response.
The museum work exposed me to another psychoanalytic concept: form follows function. Shape gives hints to purpose. A jawbone with some sharp and some flat teeth suggests an omnivorous animal. An angry outburst with some bite to it says many things, perhaps along the lines of “you got too close to me, please leave,” or “combat feels safer than closeness.”
Before graduate school, I briefly volunteered for the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. Injured birds generally want to be left alone. And, of course, they cannot talk to people. More psychoanalytic ideas: A calm and steady bodily presence and a bit of patience are necessary to safely assist a creature trying to recover its equilibrium, especially when words fail or can't be found.
Working with biology and nature in this way taught me a lot about working with people. But a solely biological perspective on the brain felt limiting. So I shifted my focus to the life of the mind, the secret universe shaped by our earliest attachments and childhood experiences. But psychoanalysis, like biology, is not just a story of where we came from. It is about how we feel alive, right here in the present.
I occasionally write about the intersection of psychoanalysis and the natural world, along with other topics. Check out the Field Notes page for updates.