Psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic science, and psychoanalytic research--1986

The present standing of psychoanalysis as a science and the vitality of psychoanalytic research effort are reviewed. The two are interdependent, since the possibilities for empirical research rest on the necessary assumption that psychoanalysis is indeed enough a science to be susceptible to knowledge advance by the (research) methods of science. Concerning our status as a science, I review attacks on our scientific credentials (both from within our ranks and without) by the logical positivists, by the hermeneuticists (a rubric comprising a variety of hermeneutic, phenomenological, exclusively subjectivistic, and/or linguistically based conceptualizations of our field), and the most recent by the philosopher of science, Adolf Grünbaum. I try to demonstrate what I feel to be the failure of each of these assaults, and why I feel there is no reason to see psychoanalysis as anything other than a scientific psychology and, therefore, in theory amenable to empirical research approaches. I then review the history and the current status of these systematic research efforts in psychoanalysis, and the reasons why these have been far less in scope and in accomplishment than has been possible or than has been needed. Here I have focused especially on research involving technique and our theory of change and cure--i.e., research on the analytic process; on what changes take place (outcome) and how those changes come about or are brought about (process).     

On psychoanalytic writing

Analytic writing constitutes a literary genre of its own. It involves the linking of an analytic idea (developed in a scholarly manner) with an analytic experience created in the medium of language. What makes this literary genre so demanding is that experience-including analytic experience-does not come to us in words. This fact generates a paradox that lies at the core of analytic writing: analytic experience (which cannot be said or written) must be transformed into 'fi ction' (an imaginative rendering of experience in words) in order to convey to the reader something of what is true to the emotional experience that the analyst had with the patient. The author discusses a clinical passage from one of his recently published papers in an effort to demonstrate some of the conscious and unconscious thinking that goes into his writing. He then looks closely at the way the language works in a successful piece of theoretical analytic writing. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of facets of the author's experience with analytic writing including the psychological 'state of writing', which is at once a meditation and a wrestling match with language; experimenting with the form (structure) of an analytic essay; and the question of originality in analytic writing.     

The psychoanalytic process

Analysts differ in how they conceptualize the psychoanalytic process, according to their understanding of the psychoanalytic theory of mental functioning in general and the nature of pathogenesis in particular. Emphasizing that psychoanalysis is a psychology of mental conflict, the authors see the psychoanalytic process in terms of the dynamic interplay between the manifestations of the patient's unconscious and the analyst's interventions. What analysts communicate to analysands serves to destabilize the equilibrium of forces within the mind, leading to the analysands' growing understanding of the nature of their conflicts and how they deal with them. Psychoanalytic process, accordingly, cannot be distinguished or separated from psychoanalytic technique.     

On psychoanalytic supervision

The author provides both a theoretical context for, and clinical illustrations of, the way in which he thinks and works as a psychoanalytic supervisor. The analytic supervisory experience is conceived of as a form of 'guided dreaming'. In the supervisory relationship, the supervisor helps the analyst to dream (to do conscious and unconscious psychological work with) aspects of the analytic relationship that the analyst is unable to dream or is only partially able to dream. It is the task of the supervisory pair to 'dream up' the patient, that is, to create a 'fi ction' that is true to the supervisee's emotional experience with the analysand. To carry out this work, the supervisor must provide a frame that ensures the supervisee's freedom to think and dream and be alive to what is occurring in the analytic and the supervisory relationship, as well as in the interplay between the two. In one of the clinical illustrations presented, the author illustrates his conception of the importance of the feeling on the part of supervisor and supervisee that (at least occasionally) they have 'time to waste'. Such a state of mind may provide an opportunity for a type of freely associative thinking that enhances the range and depth of what can be learned from the supervisory experience. In another clinical example, the author describes his own experience in supervision with Harold Searles, which contributed to his conception of the supervisory process.     

On psychoanalytic autobiography

This article considers how one might define ‘psychoanalytic autobiography’, using statements from theorists of ‘life-writing’ and extracts from autobiographers (some of them psychoanalysts), together with their own commentaries on the genre. The focus is less on content and more on the nature of the art form, with a view to noting analogies with the psychoanalytic process. These analogies are to be found, in particular, in the qualities of transference dialogue; in the art of transformative or communicative projective identification; and in the contrast between self-indulgent and constructive types of memory. Psychoanalytic autobiography is seen as a mode of remaking the self – not omnipotently but through exploratory self-analysis, frequently following the familiar pattern of loss and rediscovery. It entails a special imagined relationship with the unknown reader, and a sense of being guided by a detached observational eye equivalent to that which Bion terms the ‘third party’ in a psychoanalytic situation.     

Idealization and psychoanalytic learning

Idealization is an intrinsic part of psychological maturation, but it is also a potential barrier to psychoanalytic learning, and must to some degree be outgrown if an analyst is to develop a natural authority and individual style. Unrecognized idealizations stifle analysts' engagement in the transferences of their patients, and so compromise the ability to freely experience and analyze them. Attention to real life and the lessons it teaches counterbalances the tendency to idealize and encourages lifelong psychoanalytic growth.     

Homosexuality and psychoanalytic hypocrisy

The author criticizes the common practice in the national and international psychoanalytic associations of denying homosexual applicants admission to training even though all parties know full well that there are more than a few homosexual psychoanalysts within their ranks, some of whom enjoy the high professional esteem of their colleagues. The author refers to his earlier article "Homosexuality and psychoanalysis" (Psyche, 1985, 39, 750-759).